Actually, Illum, I am completely in agreement that the best approach to the end of December celebration would be to make it into a celebration that acknowledges all religions, cultures and nations, including Shinto, Tao, those who recognize Christmas, Hannukah and the renewal of the year.

My objection was to stores putting up Christmas wreaths, Christmas trees, playing canned Christmas carols directly transcribed from the Chrisatmas tradition, and then ignoring the Christmas face of it by calling it "holidays" so as not to offend people who are not inclined to recognize Christmas. But they still make those holiday shoppers listen to "Oh, Holy Night", "O Little Town of Bethlehem", and "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen" as if those spoke to universal human spiritual contexts, rather than predominantly Christian ones.

Maybe we can gradually migrate to something that embraces all human threads in a single end-of-year celebration of survival. That would be a hoot. Maybe we should call it Hootersday!! That would establish a pretty universal human context for it!! We'd just replace Santa with Victoria. Think of all the jobs it would generate, redesigning the cards, wrappings, writing new songs, etc..... it would revitalize the whole planet's economy!!

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