[Delphi]

As a northern hemisphere member of the pagan tendency, the winter solstice tends to matter to me more than Christmas Day - not as worship of the sun god, but as marking and honouring the start of the return of the light. Living in Scotland it's always a relief when the short days end!

I count myself as fortunate in that these days I can spend Christmas Day with the friends I choose to be with rather than making emotionally charged duty visits to family.

In recent years I have given gifts from Oxfam, matching the gift to the individual as carefully as possible, so that the gardener has seeds, the sound engineer has a windup radio, the teacher has a teacher support kit that have all gone to people who really need them. This year i have been so aware of all the places in the world that are short of water while we in southern Scotland have seen far more rain than we wanted or needed, that I might give one joint present to help to provide drinking water to a village somewhere.
I do like to give, and I thoroughly dislike having to at a specified time of year. I try to avoid shops from October onwards and particularly loathe christmasy muzak in supermarkets. Last Christmas Eve the staff in my local supermarket must also have had enough of it too, because they had replaced carols with Dylan.
meanwhile let me be the first to wish everyone a very haopy Christmas!!!