First of all, a special note to our Jewish readers.

Slowly, now, rinse and repeat: Christmas . . .IS. . . NOT . . . A . . . POGROM.

There are many reasons for that, one of which is that it has always been far too cold on December 25 to incite even inebriated Cossacks into torching Chinese restaurants. Instead, it's a happy day, with gifts and kids, and happy drunks. There's even an inclusive menorah or two. So reholster the litigation, please.

In fact, really, no Christian holiday is a pogrom. . . Well, OK, Good Friday is. But you knew that already.

But the above does give me a chance to recycle this old chestnut, not necessarily roasting on an open fire.

Once in our neighborhood there was a Jewish kid who wanted a Christmas tree, just to feel like many of his friends. His parents fought over whether they should give in. Finally they agreed that if a rabbi would say a brucha over it, it was ok.

They went to the Orthodox Rabbi, Moishe Katznelson, who all but threw them out of his office, "No, never!" So they tried the Conservative Rabbi, Sheldon Stern, who thought for a few moments and said,"I'm really sorry, I can't." Finally they went to the local Reform Rabbi, Scott-Kevin Johnson, who said, "Sure, why not? But I must insist on one thing, though . . ."

"Yes, what's that?" the parents asked.

"Tell me, what's a brucha?"

Back to Christmas. Christmas, as most people know, honors the day, December 25, that Jesus Christ created the Winter Solstice to enable the Yule holiday and Roman Saturnalia to help celebrate the Feast of the Unconquerable Sun and thereby please Mithra, a Messiah of probable Zoroastrian origin. Of course, it's not really quite that simple.

In a more serious universe, December 25th did honor the return of the sun after its shortest appearance at the solstice a few days earlier. It's almost as if the Sun dies (Dec 22) and rises again on the third day. A solar cult in ancient Rome overlapped with the newer mystery cult of Mithra, the rival Eastern movement to Christianity. When legalized and established, Christianity took over the day's festivities (including that of the Saturnalia, Rome's more traditional solstice holiday). The circular Christian communion wafer is a good example of the takeover of sun-disk worship imagery. (Note to Star Trek fans: Rome had plenty of sun cults, despite what Spock says on the Rome parallel planet episode.)

Northern European solstice traditions intrude in our Anglo-Saxon German immigrant American-dominated cultural world. Evergreen trees, wreaths, lamps/lights, extreme alcohol use. Tree worship is so Northern European (even the Song "O Christmas Tree" was originally German) that one could stretch a revisionist history to suggest that the Vikings emerged in all their monastery-plundering glory because Christian war chief Charlemagne had earlier in the 8th Century destroyed the Saxon sacred tree Irminsul/Yggdrasil. The Danes have since given up monastery and island plundering for cartoon provocations.

St Nicholas, who, to no surprise, gained weight after coming to America and changing his name to Santa Claus, became an important figure because his saint's day was in December and the historical figure -- a Greek from what is now Turkey -- was associated with gift-giving.

Songs, called carols, are sung as part of the day and season. Many of these songs have nothing to do with the religion or even the holiday -- Jingle Bells, Winter Wonderland (no holiday, no religion), The Hallelujah Chorus (no holiday).

On a Christian religious level, the day honors the birth of Jesus, attended by angels, animals and that kid with the stupid rumpa-pum-pum song. Make that stop. On a MENA side note, the Little Drummer Boy TV special was I think successfully stopped or altered by Arab-Americans who took offense (there's a shock) at the cartoon's portrayal of Arab kids bullying the Jewish main character, presumably for something that hadn't yet happened until 7 or 19 centuries later.

Jesus is, in Christian doctrine, God made man, a card-carrying member of the Hypostatic Union, and the second person of the Trinity. He is thus God the Place, as opposed to God the Win (origin of the name Godwin*), and God the Show. This kind of stuff always evokes a gasping chorus of astagfir'llahs in Muslims who find it absurdly incomprehensbile, and deeply offensive to the idea of an absolute, solitary, mono-Deity, a pan-dimensional singularity, of scrupulous One-itude.

Who refers to himself repeatedly as "we" in his book.

Jews don't agree with it all either, but don't get upset at the theory as much, so long as there are no pogroms involved.

The religious stories associated with Christmas -- the inn, the manger, King Herod, the magi -- are actually from two separate Biblical accounts. They have been duly embellished with later folklore, as, for example, the magi-astrologers becoming Three Kings. The two accounts -- except perhaps for the genealogies -- do not inherently conflict and are reconcilable with each other, but key ingredients of one story are not in the other. In one account (Gospel of Matthew), there is no reference ot an inn (they live in a house) or prior residence in Nazareth; in the other (Gospel of Luke), the journey is the main story and there is nothing about a massacre of baby Bethlehemites, or a star over the birthplace.

The religious source of the holiday is that life and sin suck, and it all ends in death, but all the bad stuff is paid off by the only one who can, God Himself, so with the right faith, it's all resurrection and candy in the end. The birth is the start of that narrative.

Merry Christmas to all of you, near and kuffar.

* Another utter lie