The premiere holdiday is February is the celebration of the birth of Thomas Alva Edison. Without Tommy (as his friends called him) we would all be listening to CDs by rushlight. There would be no direct current flowing into our homes from the electrical plants conventiently located only a mile or less away, and we wouldn't be watching porno flicks while dictating.

Yes, Big Tom's birthday is far more important than those of Lincoln and Washington and to the truly religious it even exceeds the anniversary of the first apparition at Lourdes.

To the cognoscentii, however, the date of February 11 is famous not because of Lourdes, not because it was Washington's original birthday, not because it was the eve Lincoln's birthday, and not because it's the natal day of the Big TA -- but because on that date an event happened that shook the universes to their roots. Yes, as you may have guessed, a shy, modest, unassuming child was born in the Great American Middle West, the firstborn of two humble parents, who was wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger while flights of angels sang my praises to shepherds who were tending their flocks in the nearby hills.