This week, perhaps in a subconscious nod to the solstice, I started reading Adam Gopnik's Winter (Anansi, 2011), the print version of his Massey Lectures delivered earlier this year.

In the section examining the history of Christmas, there is a wonderful passage on the "Christmas Truce" of 1914:

Editor’s Note: Happy Thanksgiving from the Media Consortium! This week, we aren’t stopping The Audit, The Pulse, The Diaspora, or The Mulch, but we are taking a bit of a break. Expect shorter blog posts, and The Diaspora and The Mulch will be posted on Wednesday afternoon, instead of their usual Thursday and Friday postings. We’ll return to our normal schedule next week.

I have no religious attachment to Easter or Christmas. They were once pagan festivals, co-opted by Christianity, and then, relatively recently, largely secularized. For many of us, they are about egg-laying bunnies and fat, chimney-sweep guys in red suits. Fa-la-la-la-la and all that.

I like these holidays, not because I observe holy days or go on buying binges but because I get time off. No phones ringing, no emails waiting (or at least not ones I'm going to answer).

I grew up in a Jewish family so Christmas has never been hard-wired in my brain. When I was a kid living in a bi-religious neighborhood in the Toronto suburbs, I looked forward to going to my friends’ homes to play with the new toys they received on Christmas morning. When I was a taxi driver in the 70s and early 80s, I used to drive on Christmas. It was a work day (and a lucrative one in those days).  When I lived on the West Coast, I took part in my first Christmas dinners and began to understand the importance of Christmas in the annual cycle of life of my friends of Christian background. I saw that Christmas meant a lot of different things to different people.