Yes, it’s the time of year when the Sun dies and must be re-born through an elaborate ceremony that involves some form or type of sacrifice, such as finding gifts for people you can’t stand and smiling brightly as you receive yet another gift based on an urban legend that you actually like truly stomach-wrenching color combinations.

Of course there was a time when the Solstice sacrifices were more visceral and the evergreen was covered in things that pleased only ravens and such, but we have put all that behind us by opting for the possibility of electrocuting one another and causing chaos on the power grid.

What a brilliant idea: moving a large supply of pre-kindling soaked with highly flammable resins into your house, loading it down with petrochemical-based ornaments, lacing it with heat-producing electrical devices, and surrounding the base with cardboard boxes and tissue paper. You just can’t have a traditional celebration without a proto-bonfire in your living room.

I do think that followers of Mithras might want to curtail their typical birthday service in light of Mad-Cow Disease, but global warming will certainly make the services in the oak wood in traditional druidic robes more comfortable.

When you put up your stocking on the mantel and put out the turnips for Gouger, Rooter, Tusker, and Snouter as well as the pork pie and sherry for the Hogfather, you can rest assured the Sun will come up, because it just slipped around back to return the lager it rented.

Enjoy! You have nothing to fear, except that sniveling little creep with the camera/phone at the office party or the eggnog that was put out rather early causing you to suspect that the bits on top aren’t nutmeg. [The pictures probably won’t appear on the ‘Net and the brandy will surely take care of the salmonella.]

A Calendar of Coming Events

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The local cats are apparently still sleeping off yesterday’s turkey and today’s left overs, so I’ll just plug in Cats in the media.

Belgians tweet cat pictures during #BrusselsLockdown. The police asked people to refrain from providing information on social media as to where they were operating, and people decided to fill in with cat pictures.

In a strange citrus fruit commercial, you have a boy using a large orange tabby guided by a laser pointer to threaten his father about eating the last orange.

The Sun tabloid ran a misleading story about Muslims supporting radicals. People responded by tweeting their on version of “1 in 5 Muslims” headlines (the cats are at the end of the article).

In Australia a red-bellied black snake (poisonous) bit a woman, and the snake was then bitten and killed by the woman’s cat. If you avoid the heads, venomous snakes taste just like turkey. (They have pictures of the woman and the snake, but no picture of the cat.)