The Big Question: What’s behind Christmas traditions – and just how traditional are they?

The date was chosen to coincide with the winter solstice and the Roman festivals associated with the shortest day of the year, which falls between 22 December and 25 December. This was seen as the day when the Romans celebrated Dies Natalis Solis Invicti – “the birthday of the unconquered sun”. It was also Jupiter’s birthday and, further back, the birthday of his Greek equivalent, Zeus. In Eastern Europe, the various Orthodox churches – the Russian, Greek, Armenian, Serbian et al, follow the old Gregorian calendar, and in which Christmas Day is 7 January There is no Santa Claus in the Gospels.

Interesting grid some people find. Aneristic Illusion none the less. Me, I’m of to the brothel.

Art from Getty Images

Spoon – The Underdog

Update: No I don’t.

Hold on. Let me just click refresh real quick.

Doodz, water the plants! No one’s done that in like…fo’evar. What are your likes and interests? Where do you live? Who the hell are you, I’ve never even seen you before. I’m surprised the phones are working.

I’m going hit refresh again.

Ah…there we go. Now what was I doing? Oh, I’ve got to post that to Delicious!

**This post brought to you courtesy of my flash drive.

Fallibilism is the epistemological thesis that no belief (theory, view, thesis, and so on) can ever be rationally supported or justified in a conclusive way. Always, there remains a possible doubt as to the truth of the belief. Fallibilism applies that assessment even to science’s best-entrenched claims and to people’s best-loved commonsense views.

Truthiness, man, truthiness.

There was a time–a period that roughly paralleled the Clinton Presidency–that I didn’t give a shit about politics. Well, that’s not exactly accurate. I was young and naive enough to believe that the Raygun Revolution was a brief speed bump on the road to the realization of the American Dream.

Then came the Bush 2000 fiasco, and the following six years.

Needless to say I was radicalized. I won’t go into the personal details. I did that on my last blog and that lead to a dead end. I was lefter than left…or something. Protested the RNC in 04′ and several other large events of a similar nature. I was still under the impression that I lived in the Democracy they taught about in grade school.

Now I’m not sure what I believe. If I believe in anything at all.

To be continued.