At this point I think I'd honestly rather have it called anything but Christmas. The connection to Christ is essentially gone in the contemporary expression of the holiday. So rather than confuse people who look at the excess and try to draw the line to Jesus, it would be better to sever the tie completely.

That point might be stretched a bit there Don.

Think of it this way, people who are rushing about making purchases for loved ones, are trying to express something, affection, regard, love.

Do you think Christ is hostile to that, or unsympathetic?

And Christmas carols playing in malls might not have the full impact that they would in Notre Dame for instance, but there is still a message being imparted.

Far more grace seeps through despite the hectic nature of the holidays, despite the mad rush, despite the commercialization, and one day we'll probably be surprised to find out how much.

better not use the word "gay" to describe the jollyness of Santa either. Next thing you know someone will point out the obvious and ask why parents let kids sit on the lap of some strange guy dressed up in a costume.

I agree with you Dan. Christmas is a strange Holiday even as Don points out. It is about lighting advent candles....and church plays...and gingerbread men and christmas trees, and it is about familly getting together again, and sharing what they have suffered and accomplished, it is about the people that can't be there and the gifts that are.

I was watching a movie that I think almost captures what Christmas is... The movie is... Simon Birch. On the one hand you have people trying to focus on projecting the real meaning of christmas...but Simon Birch as the baby Jesus is more interested in kissing Mary... Simon Birch is held responsible for ruinning the christmas pagent...and reprimanded for thinking that there was any "reason" he was born, Simon ends up dying to save kids who are evacuating a school bus, which as he understands it is what he was put in the world to do.

In the end Simon Birch is an alternate christmas story, that reminds us that Christmas may not be about packaging and directing a mood.

Dan, I guess it depends on what one thinks the meaning of "Christmas" really is. And my point is that it's nearly impossible to see that meaning from the orgy of consumerism and the overriding sense of obligation that pervades the day.

Christmas is about Christ himself ... about God taking human form and entering our reality. The implications of that are staggering.

I'd wager few people see that in the two-for-one "Christmas" sale at Wal-Mart. Fewer still consider the implications of God among us when their credit card bills arrive in January.

Is Christ hostile or unsympathetic to "affection" and "love." Of course not. But I think he'd be hostile to the notion of "love" being "buy something for someone."

Love seeks to express itself. When it can't do so, it's thwarted in its vital energy. Purchasing roses displays affection, sending a card, writing a letter. Going beyond that, purchasing an anklet for the woman you love, a watch. Spending time in a jewelry store, trying to find just the right gift.

There is of course a great deal of truth in what you observed. You know that.

But that point can be stretched.

It's true that the Incarnation is the central point of all history. It's an event that we will spend eternity in awe of.

But Christ does not scorn the "ordinariness" of human events. He attended a wedding, and it was there that he performed his first miracle. And that miracle, at the urging of his Mother, was about what, simply providing more alcohol so the guests could enjoy themselves. That demonstrates that Christ is attentive to the least of our concerns.

He knows that not every single time a Carol is playing, that every single person will stop, give ear, and immerse himself in the fullness of the Nativity. He doesn't expect that.

Not all are called to an Abbey, not all are called to ministry. Not all are called to so complete an offering.

It's well to be mindful that much of the attack against the Christmas season isn't from outraged Christians, but Lefties, who overhype the "commercialization" of the holiday as an excuse to accuse all Christians as hypocrites.

What flows from the Left usually has little truth therein.

And John, I haven't seen Simon Birch.

Of course I'm not saying that Christ scorns the ordinary. Of course he treasures the affection we have for one another. Of course.

But can you deny that a good deal of the commercial message of the season is "If you really loved them, you'd buy this for them?" It's pervasive.

"Christmas" has been drifting in the direction of a purely secular event for some time now. My original point was that it might be better to just acknowledge it as such. That might allow those who with faltering steps seek Christ actually spot him. Because it sure isn't easy when the message is: "Buy their love!"

Yes, I know I'm sounding cynical. I am cynical. I find Christmas to be increasingly depressing because of what it has become.

I don't know, I think if you REALLY loved a woman, you would NOT buy her an anklet. Unless, you get her a 6-pack and a carton of cigs under the tree too, I guess. I think Jesus would have a problem with the anklet:)

Although becoming secularized, it's still one of those seasonal milestones that lives are built around.

As such, Christmas and Easter for that matter, still exert a spiritual gravitational pull. Think of them as loci in a yearly ellipse. Every year Christmas comes around, and although to be sure, it's commercialized, it's increasingly secularized, it's STILL Christmas, and it still has the ability to enable many to ponder, even if for a few moments, the central message of Christianity, a Loving Father who sent his Son "to testify to the truth."

As for the commercialization, as for the secularization, be mindful too, that "where sin abounds, GRACE abounds all the more." It would be nice if one of the Protestants could toss in a chapter and a verse for those Gospel references.

Tony, do you seriously think that Jesus objects to women wearing a piece of jewelry around their ankle? I didn't get the memo that says that anklets are something only trailer trash wear. Since when did ankle jewelry become low class and offensive to God?

Just kidding about Jesus, of course, so lighten up. As for them being, how shall we say . . . well, you said it well, I'll leave that to the judgment of the fashion world.

I'm a leg guy so anything that makes a woman's legs look better, I'm all for.

Towards that end, I suggest that Bush restore his credibility by legislating a ban on those unsightly flips that so many women wear, which do nothing to accentuate the natural and comely curve of their legs. They've taken to wearing those things all over the place, and not just on the beaches anymore.

I will certainly agree with that, Dan, especially on Christmas Day!

Recall Tony, it was God that made women ravishing. Don't blame me 'cause I'm normal enough to notice. I'm just the messenger here.

But as for Christmas Day Tony, well, you can always make a purchase for that certain woman at Victoria's Secret.

Professor, columnist, occasional radio host Walter Williams has loads of advice for men making purchases for their wives, whatever the occasion. He ought to write a book on the subject.

Actually, there's a foreign policy aspect to my suggestion about banning flips.

Think of it this way, creepy muslim states that mandate the creepy shariaa, enforce creepy burqaas and veils for women, which make them look like wraiths from some Tolkien drama.

The United States however, under my considered proposal, would go the other way. We would begin banning shoes, clothing and apparel that DETRACTS from the natural beauty of women.

Ho, ho, ho. Or should I actually say, 'ho?

Boys . . . what's creepier? The berkas or this discussion of yours? There's a certain locker room quality to it that one can appreciate in its place (though this isn't the place) but, on the other hand . . . you're talking about women's clothes and jewelry and shoes!? You'd better leave the discussion of women's fashion to the women if you know what's good for you. "Darling, you look lovely!" is as far as you should ever take it if you don't want to hand in your "manly" card (and loose the privileges associated with it).

Julie wrote: "and lose the privileges associated with it"

There are privileges?

I never knew.

Sorry, Julie, but the blanket "honey you look great" is a sure recipe for seeing lots of stuff you don't really like (for instance, pants). I judiciously apply a scaled group of compliments. It's worked pretty well so far. I don't think we are discussing women's fashion, so much as what women look hot in, and that is not an un-manly thing to do.

Julie, what's wrong with the locker room? Think about it. The locker room wasn't the place where PC originated. The locker room was and is adjacent to places of athletic strife, and that strife is all about results, genuine merit. There's no affirmative action that is going to get you a Super Bowl trophy. Affirmative Action can't win you an NCAA Basketball championship. It's all about results. Isn't that conservative? Recall the line of Wellington, who said that "Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton." Go watch KNUTE ROCKNE, ALL-AMERICAN, where he gives a speech before some politicans who were pondering outlawing football, and he speaks on the importance of gridiron values, id est, locker room values. We're living in a society where kids can't even play with toy guns, can't bring toy swords to school for Halloween, even if they're dressed as Zorro, they can't climb trees and just to play with their pals, they have to have their mothers go and arrange "play dates."

What's all that got to do with the locker room? Answer: Do you think it was the guys from the locker room who started all that? Don't you think guys like me consider all of that bulls*%$.

Julie trust me on this, but you have far more in common with guys like me, guys from the locker room, than you do with those who would have reproached themselves for posting what I posted, or even thinking what I thought, {which had a certain tongue-in-cheek aspect about it, and was posted partly to see if I could get a rise from an audience far too keen to post on Tocqueville}.

So long as the parlance of the locker room isn't 24/7, leave the locker room its place.

Libs have declared war on martial virtues, the warrior ethos. The locker room is one of the only places left where the Left hasn't yet inserted its poison, its pathology.

Besides, don't you think we notice women? I can tell a woman's figure out of the corner of my eye, and could do since I was a teenager. Don't women appreciate us noticing? Aren't they irritated when we don't, when for instance we overlook the fact that they got their hair "styled." Don't ya' think occasionally, we might discuss what we're seeing, amongst ourselves?

So to sum up, the problem isn't the locker room per se, but when the attitudes of the locker room overwhelm and predominate everything else. That's when you have a situation like Michael Caine, in ALFIE.

And another thing, which I just thought of.

Was it the men from the locker room that caused the fashion industry to start portraying women models as starvation victims? I once dated a former runway model, who worked in Paris, who ate nothing more than a single banana each day. She told me she got brutal, wicked headaches each day. Who were the guys involved in that? Wasn't me! Wasn't TONY. Guys like me prefer women with curves, women who look like and act like women. So my point here is think of how the common sense found in the locker room, which was dispensed with, might have prevented so many women forming a mistaken, impossible and flatly undesirable image of female beauty. Anorexia and Bulimia have claimed how many? And why? Because too many teenage girls think a model affecting a heroin chic is the beaux ideal.

The women and the men involved in the warping of women's beauty didn't and don't hail from the locker room.

Ask a guy from the locker room, who would you prefer, Ava Gardner, Kate Moss. It's not even a contest. In yesteryear, when the commonsense of the locker room prevailed, a woman like Kate Moss wouldn't have had a prayer of earning a spot as a model. But recently, the starved waif look, the androgynous look, is constantly portrayed.

It's something of a scandal.

Nope, that starvation look sure didn't come from the locker room. It came from them designers in Paris and New York, and they're all queers.

graet site,