America Celebrates Christmas

Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft and one of the richest men in the world, joined over 200,000 members of the website "Reddit" to participate in their annual Secret Santa gift exchange. (Full disclosure: I also participated.) In Reddit's Secret Santa, participants are matched to a random "giftee," and the "gifter" can choose whether or not to share their identity.

If there is actually a war on Christmas, famed astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson seems ready to lead the fight.

On Christmas morning, Tyson, the director of New York’s Hayden Planetarium, took to Twitter to troll those celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ. Tyson wrote “On this day long ago, a child was born who, by age 30, would transform the world. Happy Birthday Isaac Newton b. Dec 25, 1642.” The tweet set off an Internet firestorm and was retweeted nearly 15,000 times in less than an hour.

Only recently have I come to accept Christmas as a secular holiday. Because of my religious awakening in high school and the subsequent falling out I had with God in college, its symbols and stories were too freighted with meaning for me just to enjoy the pretty colors.

But I used to be a true believer. My parents made sure all five of their children were baptized and went to catechism until they had their first communion, which among Catholics is the first time a child receives the body of Christ in the form of unleavened bread and His blood in the form of wine.