'Holiday Tree' All Right by Me

All this controversy over the national Christmas tree being called a 'holiday tree'. It bothers me not. It was a pagan tradition to begin with, one the Christians stole from them. Why not keep it open to all people celebrating around the Winter Solstice? (Another thing we stole from the pagans, Saturnalia).

Don't tell the Christians, but truth be told, those little candles we put on our "Christmas trees"? They used to be wooden penises, presumably erect in honor of some fertility rite or another.

But then, I've been known to be a touch irreverent on the subject of Christmas before, even penning an ode to The True Spirit of Saturnalia at one point.

To prove that I have some maudlin feelings surrounding the holiday, and perhaps the larcenous heart of a songwriter looking to make a killing, I do have one Christmas song lyric to my credit, but I can't imagine anyone every really recording it. First, you'd have to be a real country woman, and that means Southern. Then you'd have to be a real Southern woman who bewails the end of the Civil War.

Maybe you're out there somewhere. If so, we could make some might fine music together.

Inventing Christmas: How Our Holiday Came to Be