I agree with statement.

Fair enough. The main reason I objected to it was that I had to hear it repeated, word for word, approximately one kajillion times.

For me, though, as a Christian, Christmas is a lot more important than the celebration of the New Year, as neither parties on New Year’s Eve or presents on Christmas are really very meaningful to me. Rather, the advent season and the philosophical significance of the events I celebrate throughout the month of December are what really constitute Christmas to me, and thus dwarf New Year immensely.

And, as a matter of public interest, two Seattle bands have recorded the best modern Christmas/New Year songs:

Sometimes You Have to Work on Christmas (Sometimes), by Harvey Danger

The New Year, by Death Cab for Cutie

Nate said “the advent season and the philosophical significance of the events I celebrate throughout the month of December are what really constitute Christmas to me”

An interesting and common bit of liturgical backwardness. Surely you’re aware that the Christmas season doesn’t start until the 24th and ends on January 6?

Now that’s an interesting point. I for one tend to forget that everything about the date(s) of Christmas is defined purely by popular convention. Hmm. D’you think maybe I could get it moved to February so it would stop screwing up poor Thanksgiving? (At the very least, I could just convert the country to Eastern Orthodoxy; January 7th would be a pretty good start.) (Of course, all of this is silly, because it ignores a fundamental issue: when would schools have their winter holidays?)

“everything about the date(s) of Christmas is defined purely by popular convention.”

I have read that St John Chysostom, writing in the fourth century, wrote (or said and had written down) in a sermon that he had seen with his own eyes census records in the Roman archives which supported the end of December as the time of Christ’s birth.

I don’t remember where I read this, however, so it is an unsupported claim. Hmm, now that I think of it, maybe it was in the Catena Aurea … I should go look it up.

Also, Mr Marks, while I sympathise with your desire to keep the “holiday [shopping] season” from terrorising Thanksgiving and, increasingly, Christmas, moving it forward much at all would cause insuperably grave liturgical difficulties. Never mind the danger posed to St Valentine’s Day; the later you move Christmas, the less of a buffer you have between it and Lent; and Lent can’t really be moved (any further, that is, than it’s moved already from year to year by the lunar cycle), because it’s determined by Easter, and the date of Easter is not really determined by popular or other convention, except insofar as the Passover is as well. (I am of course prescinding from the quarrels on just how to calculate the date of Easter, since everyone agrees on the primary point: that it’s a memorial of the Ressurection, which happened around the Passover feast.)

In order to keep Christmas from threatening other holidays, then, the safest bet is probably to move it to, say, the second week in July. But I don’t think most of us would be too happy with that for a multitude of liturgical, cultural, symbolic and sentimental reasons. Sorry.

… from terrorising Thanksgiving and, increasingly, Halloween …

I’m aware that the liturgical Christmas season is so defined, yes, but it has little to do with the reality of the Christmas celebration throughout my life. Even now that I’m part of a church that follows a liturgical calendar, I find the celebration of Advent more interesting and enjoyable than the Christmas season that follows the initial day.

That’s too bad …

though as a convert to a liturgical Church myself, eight years later the same is still largely true for me as well.