"Bah!" said Scrooge, "Humbug!"

With a sink of our holiday spirits, nHumanities watched a brief email skirmish erupt this past week over the proper and improper acknowledgement / explanation / celebration of seasonal holidays in Northwest College's Hinckley Library. The situation started with the Library Director's request for a dreidel to include in an exhibit on Hanukkah and Kawanzaa, went on to a flurry of exchanges over Christmas nativities, and . . . well, you can imagine where it went from there.

Let nHumanities rush in where angels fear to tread! (Please note this is not a endorsement of any religion or sect's perception of angels, but rather a proper, prim, and pedantic literary allusion to Pope, although when it comes to angels, we'll take Milton's nine orders of angels from Paradise Lost every time: Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, Dominations, Virtues, Powers, Principalities, Archangels, and Angels.)

Christmas is not only a Christian festival. The celebration has roots in the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, the festivals of the ancient Greeks, the beliefs of the Druids and the folk customs of Europe. -- "The History of Christmas"

Here are a few interesting online resources on winter holidays:

• The History of Christmas, from the BBC's Religion & Ethics website
• BBC's multifaith calendar
• Solstice Celebrations From A to Z by J. T. McAlister
• Candlegrove's Ancient Origins of the Holidays has some good links
• Celebrating the Holidays in an Interfaith Family
  
• Holiday Blues
  
• Fall-Related Injuries During the Holiday Season --United States, 2000--2003
• Ways to simplify the holidays from New American Dream and Conscious Choice
• Tips for Holiday Shopping, from FTC Bureau for Consumer Protection
• NPR's Holidays 2005 web site
• Wilson "Snowflake" Bentley, Photographer of Snowflakes (one of his snowflakes graces this post)