Christmas is the gentlest, loveliest festival of the revolving year - and yet, for all that, when it speaks, its voice has strong authority.

Cameron contrasts Christmas’s outward qualities—gentleness, beauty, and seasonal warmth—with its inward moral force. The festival may arrive wrapped in softness (family rituals, charity, nostalgia), but it also carries an imperative: it “speaks” with authority by summoning people to higher standards of generosity, reconciliation, and spiritual attention. The line suggests that Christmas is not merely decorative or sentimental; it exerts a kind of ethical jurisdiction over the year, reminding individuals and communities of duties they may neglect in ordinary time. The “revolving year” phrasing also frames Christmas as a recurring moral checkpoint, returning annually to reassert its claims.