Christmas renews our youth by stirring our wonder. The capacity for wonder has been called our most pregnant human faculty, for in it are born our art, our science, our religion.

Sockman links Christmas not primarily to nostalgia or sentiment, but to a psychological and spiritual renewal: it reawakens “wonder,” the childlike openness that makes experience feel new. He then broadens the claim beyond the holiday, arguing that wonder is generative—“pregnant”—because it gives rise to humanity’s highest cultural expressions. Art begins in astonishment at beauty and form; science begins in curiosity about how the world works; religion begins in awe before mystery and meaning. The quote thus frames Christmas as a yearly ritual that can restore the imaginative and inquisitive posture on which creativity, knowledge, and faith depend.