It's beginning to look a lot like

a late December religious festival of murky pagan∕judeo∕christian origins*.

If your festivities includes Village People-like prancers and flouncers performing a divinely exuberant choreography inspired by Riverdance, A Chorus Line and How She Move, we present once more: The 12 Gays of Christmas.



* Though this may not be the definitive essay about the origins of the celebration of Christmas, it certainly works for me.

How did December 25 become Christmas? We cannot be entirely sure. Elements of the festival that developed from the fourth century until modern times may well derive from pagan traditions. Yet the actual date might really derive more from Judaism—from Jesus’ death at Passover, and from the rabbinic notion that great things might be expected, again and again, at the same time of the year — than from paganism. Then again, in this notion of cycles and the return of God’s redemption, we may perhaps also be touching upon something that the pagan Romans who celebrated Sol Invictus, and many other peoples since, would have understood and claimed for their own too.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot the obligatory shriEEEkkk for the christofascists reading this post.

Media Freak Show

More from the slow news day media freak show.

On December 19 a woman gave birth at Kingsbury Station, on the Jubilee London Underground Line.

That in itself is unusual, since that makes her "the second person to give birth on London's Underground rail network since it opened 146 years ago" according to Reuters UK.

Most, if not all media who carried the news item also mentioned that she is Polish and homeless.

Those descriptives are not insignificant, as they play into a national fear that the UK is under siege and that hordes of foreigners from the EU are invading its cities.

Strange that not one media noted a connection with another pregnant woman who gave birth far away from home, near the winter solstice. Except that woman's infant was not a girl.