In defense of Christmas...

Well folks, tomorrow is the day, the day I wait for every year. It’s like Christmas morning only better. It’s the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. Yeah I know that the day is still 24 hours long but the meaning here is that the day of the winter solstice is the day when the time period between sunrise and sunset is the shortest.

Starting on the 23^rd the days actually begin to get longer. We get only about 1 more minute per day but that rate of increase means that by February 26^th 2006 we will have sunset at 6 PM instead of the 5 PM hour we are currently suffering with.

I really dislike the smaller amount of daylight. Getting home after dark makes me feel as if I have worked longer for some reason, even to the point of it feeling as if I have worked overtime.

That said, the winter solstice has added another little twist to our popular culture. It’s given us a societal cop out to avoid offending anyone by using the term Merry Christmas and calling our, you should pardon the expression ‘holiday happenings’ Christmas parties.

I just don’t get it! What has happened to tolerance? How is it that those of us who celebrate Christmas are the only ones from whom sensitivity to our multi-cultural society is required?

When I get home tonight (after dark ) I’m going to turn on my CHRISTMAS lights, light my CHRISTMAS candles, listen to a few CHRISTMAS carols and do as I bloody well please…even if it does put me in the same category as the Kool-Aid sucking ideologues at Fox News. 

Oh and as a footnote, I would be pleased, no, honored to respectfully attend any and all celebrations or observations of Ramadan, Kwanzaa, Chanukah or if the Druids do anything, their celebrations too.  That’s what makes America  the “melting pot” of the world, not the Zip Locked, Glad Bagged, Tupperwared, shrink wrapped society our paranoid PC-ness seems to demand.

That's my story and I am, by God, stickin' to it...

Comments

[NIkki]

I agree! - Amen Brother, Amen! At least I think I do. Let me ask the media - fox news specifically.

[Uncle Jack]

What a grouch. How come my almanac says that today is the Winter Solstice (Dec. 21)? Tomorrow is one second longer than today it says.

[Jim Brodhead]

I used my Almanac of expediency. Think it's a matter of the specific time of day that the sun reaches it's southernmost point. Since I am utterly incapable of keeping track of such detail I rounded it up to tomorrow...kind of like a delayed sunrise on the OBX...

Merry Christmas to you and yours!!!!!