I'm up a little early and so I thought I'd wish everyone a Merry Christmas before things get hectic around my place. And by hectic I mean making a lot of food and opening a lot of gifts. I say Christmas just because that is the name of the holiday we're celebrating today, and that being the holiday of putting up a tree in your house, decorating it, giving gifts to friends and family and taking a moment to enjoy all that goes with that. It's also the most materialistic holiday celebrating how much control advertising has on us convincing us we need things that we really don't need at all, but I'm not exempt from it so I'll celebrate that as well. I could say Happy Holidays since this is the time of year of Solstice, Yule, Christmas, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, Teng Chieh, Diwali, Soyal, Las Posadas, Zagmuk, and Saturnalia but Merry Zagmuk just doesn't have that same commercialized ring to it. To some other folks this is also a celebration of the day Jesus was born. Of course that is a rather new development, as the Church wasn't too keen on celebrating birthdays for a good number of years. Easter was the really big Christian holiday but in 2006 that just isn't as marketable. With Easter there is still a feeling that gifts and items exchanged need to have some kind of Easter theme, but with Christmas anything and everything is fair game. This time of year is always amusing when folks get bent out of shape that Jesus isn't front and center claiming that he is the whole reason we're celebrating anything today. Unfortunately those people didn't read far enough back in their history books - While there are no shortages of winter holidays - December 25th specifically is the date of the pagan Sol Invictus Festival, celebrating the birth of the Sun, which because of it's popularity was adopted by the early Catholic Church as the date of Jesus's birth. (source: wikipedia & catholic encyclopedia ) Many of the Pagan Yuletide traditions such as the decorated tree, holly, missletoe, Yule Log, and eating a Ham are still just as widely celebrated, if not more so than the whole Jesus connection. I certainly know a lot more people with Christmas tree's in their house than Nativity scenes. There is a lot more info on the wikipedia article on Winter Holiday Seasons but does any of it matter? What is the point of trying to prove whose idea all this is in the first place? Does anyone really think that a Christian approaching an infidel and convincing him that he's buying that new Playstation 3 for his son because of Jesus is going to turn him into a Church goer? Are there any atheists who think that by dropping yuletide science a devoted Baptist is going to scrap the whole religion thing? No. None of that is going to happen and it's just another way people try to one up each other to make themselves feel important for a few minutes. Me, I don't really give a crap about it. My tree looks beautiful and I'm excited to see my wife's face when she opens the gifts sitting under it that were wrapped up for her with love. I'm also excited to see what loot I scored this year. Merry Christmas!