Because congress adopted a federal holiday on June 26, 1870. Simple.

Why, you ask?

Well, it had an inauspicious beginning in the country. It was so controversial (decadent) in the 1700s that it was actively banned by Puritains, including those who left England to settle the early American states. Perhaps more importantly it was shunned by the Founding Fathers since it was considerd an English tradition and irrelevant to the observance of religion. Alas, Digital History suggests by the early 1800s Christmas in America had become just another famously drunken, lewd and riotous event, rivaling the decadence of old King Charles’ England:

But despite the Puritans’ best efforts, Christmas in America became an excuse for dangerous hell raising. At Christmastime, men drank rum, fired muskets wildly, and costumed themselves in animal pelts or women’s clothes – crossing species and gender. In New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and other cities, they formed Callithumpian parades, which involved beating on the kettles, blowing on penny trumpets and tin horns, and setting off firecrackers.

Sounds like a blast, no? Well, the fun obviously never lasts forever and so things eventually came to a head when, according to the History Channel, the effects of Christmas coupled with a rise in poverty and class conflict of the early 19th Century gave concern to those who were in power:

In 1828, the New York city council instituted the city’s first police force in response to a Christmas riot. This catalyzed certain members of the upper classes to begin to change the way Christmas was celebrated in America.

The new message was that people should stay home, sit by a fire, and drink and eat themselves senseless instead of partying outside with others. And so, out of the political discord of 150 years ago we can today say thank you to the federal government for inventing a national tradition and opening the door for America’s two great factions, corporations and religions, to fight over control of the “real” meaning of this holiday.

Thanks should also go to Thomas Nast, arguably the father of modern American political illustration, for creating the modern American image of Santa Claus during the Civil War…it might be worth noting that Santa was always pro-Union and anti-slavery.

Oh, and why December 25th? Apparently Pope Julius I wanted something to compete with the popularity of the festival “Saturnalia”, and probably found it most convenient to just rebrand the pagan holiday with a new name. Merry Saturnalia had a bad ring to it, I guess (especially since the word implied an “inversion of order” instead of something Christ-like).

Personally, I think the holiday should be celebrated on June 26th before someone starts another winter riot over the latest must-have expression of modern faith, like an XBox.

The BBC reports that a Judge in Pennsylvania has questioned the integrity of ID proponents and struck down their attempt to inject creationism into science curriculums at school:

Judge Jones said he had determined that ID was not science and “cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents”.

Citizens had been “poorly served” by members of the school board who voted for the ID policy, he said.

“It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID policy,” he said.

“We find that the secular purposes claimed by the board amount to a pretext for the board’s real purpose, which was to promote religion in the public school classroom.”

Religious extremists misrepresenting their true objectives? Impossible. My favorite comment from the BBC peanut gallery is from someone who claims to be from the US:

U.S. school students are falling behind their peers in developed countries in science and mathematics. Therefore, U.S. schools need to intelligently redesign their science curriculums not teach intelligent design as science.

Well said!

The “national security versus the public’s right to know” debate is nothing new to the US, but Bush appears to have lost serious amounts of credibility as key members of the House and Senate openly compare his faith-based requests for secrecy to Johnson’s worst decisions during the Vietnam War. For example Rep Murtha was just on the morning news yesterday and he was asked whether he believes the Bush administration’s assessment of the road ahead. Murtha retorted “Why should I trust him?” He went on to say that he remembers President Johnson’s announcement that he would not let the US pull out of Vietnam as things were about to get better. Murtha said the result was that more than 38,000 soldiers lost their lives before the US could admit that Johnson’s strategy was flawed from the start.

That brought to mind Nixon’s “Silent Majority” speech, which had a very different take on the situation (the beginning of the end rather than the end of the beginning). What Nixon lacked in domestic smarts he more than made up for in international relations, and yet he rarely gets mentioned outside of Watergate, which probably means either that the US still has a very long way to go in Iraq or maybe just that the “N” word is considered off-limits:

The other two factors on which we will base our withdrawal decisions are the level of enemy activity and the progress of the training programs of the South Vietnamese forces. And I am glad to be able to report tonight progress on both of these fronts has been greater than we anticipated when we started the program in June for withdrawal. As a result, our timetable for withdrawal is more optimistic now than when we made our first estimates in June. Now, this clearly demonstrates why it is not wise to be frozen in on a fixed timetable.

We must retain the flexibility to base each withdrawal decision on the situation as it is at that time rather than on estimates that are no longer valid.

Along with this optimistic estimate, I must-in all candor-leave one note of caution.

If the level of enemy activity significantly increases we might have to adjust our timetable accordingly.