Okay, I'll bite, Blackcatter: How do you look at the holiday season? You've explained your religious views today on the "Where is God?" thread, yet you've joined the Mudcat Secret Santa program (and Santa is derived from the story of St. Nicholas... "Christian oriented, obviously"!) But you don't want to hear songs about Santa. And Solstice songs are right out. So aside from getting the day off from work and playing Celtic music with friends, and listening to winter songs, is there anything else about the holiday season that interests you?

When I weaned myself away from the fundamentalist-Christian church, I had some trouble reconciling the question of what to do about Christmas. I decided to concentrate on the message of hope for peace in the world, and "allow" in my mind that the Christmas story is a metaphor for that. So I feel minimal discomfort singing the carols I was raised with, and I have a lot of tapes of instrumental Christmas songs so I can enjoy the music without the message. I still won't sing Easter hymns, though.