Christmas Eve is the night for midnight blue skies, cloudless and serene; a night for stars dazzling and tantalizingly close to earth in all their silent glory; the night for galaxies vast and mysterious, drawing us away in time and space to worlds beyond the fringes of sense and imagination. Increasingly urban as we are, we often lose the appreciation for the sky's nighttime splendor so spectacular to dwellers in the more arid climes. As a very young child in Wisconsin, on our way to the school Christmas program, I was entranced by the splendid glory of the winter sky. Through the years the wonder has never diminished and has grown even more as now we read of galaxies and stars in the making as viewed through the Hubble telescope. These galaxies, vast beyond description, distant beyond im…