Christmas remix

Not surprisingly, there is a great outcry ever year about how Christmas has lost its religiousness. "Let's get back to the true meaning of Christmas," shout fundamentalists. "Stop the commercialism" they rave. But they're wrong, on two counts.

First, the true meaning of Christmas has nothing to do with the birth of Jesus. The celebration as we know it today stems from various traditions in Europe, but primarily from Saturalia in Rome. The History Channel adds:

Also around the time of the winter solstice, Romans observed Juvenalia, a feast honoring the children of Rome. In addition, members of the upper classes often celebrated the birthday of Mithra, the god of the unconquerable sun, on December 25. It was believed that Mithra, an infant god, was born of a rock. For some Romans, Mithra's birthday was the most sacred day of the year.

It was only after Christians obtained power in the Roman empire that Pope Julius 1 declared that December 25 was actually Jesus's birth. This date is as arbitrary as they come. Mostly, Pope Julius hoped that by placing Jesus's birth date on the same day as an already popular celebration, it would be easily and quickly adopted. He was right.

But there were consequences for doing this. Namely, many of the pagan traditions for celebrating the winter solstice continued. These included bringing evergreen trees (or their clippings) in from outside and decorating them, yule logs, mistletoe, large meals and lots of gift giving.

Indeed, today, even our government considers it a secular holiday, hence the appropriateness of declaring it a national holiday. (According to our constitution, the government cannot establish a church).

So where does this leave the Christians' claims that "We've lost the spirit of Christmas"? Well, the spirit originally was with celebrating the end of the waning daylight hours. So that's really why we get together and celebrate. But there is more to Christmas than just that. If we want to redefine what Christmas is for or how to celebrate it, then we need an objective standard for doing so. The Christians hopes that others will do only what they want, is clearly not objective.

As Leonard Peikoff so eloquently stated:

It is time to take the Christ out of Christmas, and turn the holiday into a guiltlessly egoistic, pro-reason, this-worldly, commercial celebration.

We should be celebrating the good in this world: capitalism, reason, productivity, etc. Many people are doing this, at least implicitly, but the celebration should be explicit, unapologetically. The commercialization of Christmas is a great thing. We need more commercialization!! Maybe we should change the name of Christmas, to Capitalmas... or perhaps Salemas.

New Orleans government - stop them at all costs

BellSouth has reported taken offense to a proposed free city-wide WiFi zone. Who can blame them? When the city of New Orleans destroys BellSouth's market for broadband, they have every reason to be pissed off.

However, BellSouth should be more pissed off. Although I'm sure it would receive much negative attention, BellSouth should demand that the city refrain from doing this or else they will provide no telephone support to the city. There is no other answer to New Orleans' threat. The government wants to destroy BellSouth and have them pay for their own destruction. Its pure evil.

Onward Ho!

Here's a book I'll have to read before too long. In an interview at Techstation Central, the author, Dr. Fogel, demonstrates his solid grasp of why humans are living longer and stronger today than they were 2 centuries ago. And has the data to back up his hypothesis.

It's all about the technology.

His massive historical analysis really followed life expectancy trends over the past couple centuries. He compares these trends with what was going on in society, such as massive immigration, urbanization, and technology innovation. For example, cities in the late 1800s had a lower life expectancies than rural areas, but innovations such as the automobile reduced pollutants like horse manure, so that people were able to live longer.

Its just great to see a scientist recognize the power of the mind to solve human problems. Unfortunately, Fogel doesn't extend this respect for intelligence to public policy, where he condones socialistic behavior.

But his points leave me feeling good about the future. As technological advances accelerate, so too will the quality of our lives. Not only can I expect huge medical and technological advances to occur before they matter to me, but my children may never know what all the fuss was about. Their lives will be one where most diseases have been cured or at least tempered by such an extent that it will be nothing to worry about.

I look forward to the future. Onward Ho!