More Famous Than Christmas (1/3) By Jim Higo

(1/3), (2/3), (3/3).

You can guarantee that some things never change. Sickening over-indulgence, excessive eating and drunken abuse of your work colleagues, followed by obnoxious obscenities, mindless violence and the inability to string together a coherent sentence. Yes, that's John Prescott for you. This Christmas I have managed to stay as close as possible to the true and original meaning of the Yuletide festival. In order to do this I have feasted to my stomach's content, I have wined and dined in honour of the sun and I have lavished my friends and family with gifts in thanks for the winter solstice. In true pagan style, I have been pissed every night.

I love Christmas and always have. I love the gift giving and the game playing, I love the lights and the trees; I love the foolish flirting at the works' do. I love the atmosphere that not even an Ashes victory or a successful war is able to compete with. There is only one thing that ruins Christmas for me, only one thing that casts its holier-than-thou shadow over the festive period and that thing is religion. It's only those religious zealots, who insist, quite incorrectly, that the period is a Christian festival, that manage to spoil the Yuletide festival.

There are two types of Christian view when it comes to the Yuletide festival. The most irritating and insufferable is the view held by the new Christian brigade. These are the Tony Blair, Daily Mail reader types, the sort who walk to church every Sunday so that everyone in the street knows they have gone and who use the bible to explain why repatriation, conscription and war are good things. These are the fools who bemoan the fact that the true meaning of Christmas, the birth of their Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, has been lost amidst a clamour for self-gratification.

They drone on about how the Yuletide should be a time when we give to those less fortunate and care for those who suffer, although in Blair's case, he doesn't seem to bother for the rest of the year, so why should it change at Christmas? But as always with these Little Englander types they manage to miss the point completely. As is often the case with those who seek to manipulate the views of others, they manage to use history erroneously, in order to prove their point. Christmas is no more a traditional Christian festival than is Divali or Muharram.

December celebrations began as pagan festivals some 4000 years ago long before the story of Jesus was made up. These festivals were celebrations during which there was great drunkenness and revelry and a sharing of riches. It was a time of thanksgiving for the winter solstice, a worshipping of the sun and welcome to the light of a new year. These celebrations took place all over the world and differ very little from those of the modern day. In the lands of the Norse, in preparation for the crusades, they would treat each other to longboats bought in flat pack from their local Ikea.

The Viking invasions were in fact delayed by years while they tried to work out why there were pieces of longboat left over that didn't appear on the instructions.

Continued.... Next Page (2/3).

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