h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

No, the Winter Solstice is not "moving backward" through the year. It happens a year after the last one. The reason it is 21-Dec while it was 22-Dec last year is that year 2000 is a leap year, 366 days, so it is three quarters of a day longer than an actual year. Most years (three out of every four of them) are 365 days, which is one quarter day less than an year.

There is also a slight wandering around of the solstice, but this happens just as much in one direction as the other, caused by some predictable thing such as the earth's elliptical orbit (I'm specularting). This never amounts to more than a day or two before it shifts back the other way.

Something that leads us back (well, it doesn't, but anyway...) to wether or not we are being Christmas Desensitised. I'm curious. How many of you celebrate anything around that time, and how many of you just eat good food and thrive in mountains of (generally useless) gifts?

I've been going for the latter all my life, coming from a strictly atheist family (my great, great grandfather was ex-communicated )

When I was a child we sang German Christmas carols together on Christmas Eve. My mother is German and they start celebrating Christmas on Christmas Eve, so we got our presents a day earlier than everybody else. As we got older, the carol singing stopped - I don't know why.

Neither Richard nor myself comes from a religious family. We don't really celebrate Christmas as a religious festival. We do give presents, but we don't tend to go overboard on the food.

Here's where there's a big difference between Europe and America. In Ireland, Christmas is the big family celebration where everyone without exception visits their relations, gets together with long lost cousins and generally has a good time. The Christmas holidays last anything from 5 to 10 days, starting on Christmas Eve, and ending sometimes as late as 4 Jan. I believe that in America, Christmas is a much more sober affair and that the family get-together is at Thanksgiving.

>As we got older, the carol-singing stopped. I don't know why<

That was poetic. And a bit sad.

In Norway the Cristmas thing is a bit varied. Mostly it's a family-thing. Like the american Thanksgiving. These last few years however, more and more youngsters (18-30 years or so..) choose to go out late Christmas Eve (the day of celebration here).
My family has a tradition with Christmas breakfast (and a New Years breakfast) that's basically eating breakfast with friends and family the entire 25th December (and 1st January). That's my favourite part of te celebration. When all the rituals have passed, the Aquevit and beer has left my body and everything is wrapped in soft, fluffy clouds of a pleasant hangover (Yes, they exist).

So Christ has left Christmas? Is the log returning to Yule?

I gave up on Christmas a long time ago. I don't go to church and I'm a non-believer. That said, I think it's as good an excuse as any for a family get-together (not that this happens, since we live a long way from our families) and a bit of present giving is always nice. We do plenty of other "Christian" stuff, because it's nice for the kids (St. Martin, St. Niklas, Karneval etc)
Sometimes, when I hear stories of peaceful things that have happened over Christmas it makes me happy, but usually I'm just annoyed by all the money that is made. (Peaceful things would include the football match in 1914 between English and German soldiers. Apparently the scor was 3:2 to Germany!)

Carneval cristian? I had no idea. I thought it meant something like Feast of the Flesh...

Unfortunately, Christmas for us has never been a family get-together. Mum's family live in Germany, and we couldn't afford to go over to see them every year. Dad's family were closer - we lived in Coventry and they live in nearby (comparatively) Leamington Spa. We'd go over to see them some time after Christmas Day, but they would never come to visit us. I always got the feeling that, with the exception of my Grandmother, they didn't like my mother. We always had to go and see them if we wanted to keep in touch. They would never return the visits. Then, in Richard's case, there were rifts with both sides of the family, for various reasons.

It's quite sad actually. Dad came from a large family (3 brothers, 3 sisters), and Mum's was a reasonable size (1 brother, 2 sisters). Richard's parents also had a brother and 2 sisters between them. But neither of us has ever experienced a real family Christmas, where the whole family meets in one place.

Mind you, our Christmasses are quiet and tranquil. As neither of us likes large noisy gatherings, we actually prefer them this way.

Christ does seem to be leaving Christmas these days. But it's still a great excuse for a party, we need more excuses to party!!

More excuses to party

Remember, the big one is coming up! The Millennium!

Oh, I don't mind parties... but, as mostly of you may have noticed, I *do* have something against celebrating christmas, and that is exactly because chrismas is not christmas anymore.. I like what's left, but you can't call in chirstmas, as there is no christ or anything involved anymore.
Still.. I'll be going home to Norway for christmas, and spend another *substitute word for christmas* with my family. I havn't seen them for half a year. I just wish it was called something else than chrismas....AND I still think it's too soon to start decorating shops for the big, commersial occasion that it has turned in to be.

In America, it *is* called something other than Christmas. It's called "holidays". I get mail order catalogs from America. They sell all sorts of "holiday goods". They don't mean swim suits and sun cream. They mean Christmas presents. They have cards which say "Happy Holidays" on them. I think this is because you might offend non-Christians in general and Jews in particular by saying Happy Christmas to them. The Jews celebrate their Festival of Lights around the same time, so "Happy Holidays" covers both.

Sounds more "fair" to me....
Still.. it's very commercial, isn't it? Then again, everything is nowasdays..

Gnomon: Holydays aside, how do you explain that the millennium-change is coming up? A lot of people seem to belive that the change was last new years eve, and I have failed quite miserably in conveying the fact the 1 (one) is the first number in any count. Drunken quarrels have occured between friends over this. Do you know of any sound way of explaining this to my (dimwit) friends?

You can't explain mathematics to people. They just cross. Anyway, the issue is far more complicated, because the whole calendar thing was only invented in about 641 AD. In truth, the millennium is whenever people want it to be. I quite happily celebrated the "premature millennium" last year and am now going to celebrate the "real millennium" this year with just as much fun.

There is a long history of celebrating the end of the century at the start of the "00" year. In December 1199, the Christian Church celebrated the end of the 12th century. My grand-aunt told me she remembered people celebrating the turn of the century on 31-Dec-1899. Apparently the Astronomer Royal made a public statement to say that they were all wrong and the real century didn't start until 1-Jan-1901, but nobody payed a blind bit of notice.

And what about the decades? Nobody would claim that 1980 was part of the 70's? So when did the first decade start? Proving it by maths is a losing battle, even if you are right.

Just enjoy the party!

then! What is our Californian friends say? "Party on!"

...and perhaps sing some carols. Don't mind not beliving, some of those s ongs are quite beutiful...

I like the idea of having extra large celebrations for 2001, I spent last new years just with family, because it was an important new year and it was wonderful, but I'd like to have the chance to go to a big millenium stylee party as well!

Stores start christmas stocking (excuse the pun) way too early. There should be a law stating that we are allowed to get one holiday out of the way before they start flogging us the next one, ie. let halloween go by before spraying snow in the windows, let valentines day go by before stocking easter eggs! It also makes sense cos they'd have more room on the shelves without cramming tat for upteen celebrations in a limited space!

I'm sure the stores do it for a good commercial reason - they sell more stuff. Christmas is huge for shops in Ireland; some sell half their entire year's sales in the month of December. I've even heard of one shop which sold half a year's sales on Christmas Eve! Any way of spreading this load is good news for them, even if it means Snow in Summer.

Les Claypool said:
"What if Christmas didn't come this year?
And noone paid for Christmas cheer...
Who would cry the biggest tears,
the child, ooooor the store?"
...but it goes without saying...

About snow in windows: Once I was so lucky as to be walking up a street close to Christmas. (It's not the walking that's lucky, I'll get to that in a bit) On the ground was snow, on my cheeks roses and in the windows I was passing by there was Christmas decorations. Quite tasty much of it too. Suddenly I came to a halt. One decoration was different from the rest. At first, it seemed like a regular star pained with snow in the window of a fairly wealthy house. Upone close inspection, I found that it was far from a regular star. It was a actually a pentagram, of the kind with two points upwards and on downwards, a symbol commonly related to stuff like satanism and various occult sects. I wonder if the owners of the house knew...

Exactly! But I am really the only person here who finds that (excuse me for the language) bloody annoying????