Solstice Greetings. posted by Richard Seymour

Okay, lenin has his fricking Santa hat on, and all you kids are invited onto his lap. Jingle my balls while you're there, and whisper any gift requests into my ear without slipping the tongue in.


Head gear.

As a non-theist, I don't give much of a flying buggery fuck whether this festival of religion and commerce is called the Christmas, Xmas, the Holiday Season, Hannukah, post-Eid festivities (is Eid over yet?) or whatever you like. It's just another Winter Tale if you ask me. But, as the merrily atheist Doug Ireland points out for me, Christopher Hitchens has belched out a hearty Bah, Humbug on the matter while debating a religious fundie on Pat Buchanan's television show, and for the first time in ages I agree with him. Do check the link, if only to see Pat Buchanan get smacked around like a rogue elf who's just broken all the toys.

Doug Ireland, for his part, deserves a couple of Ho's for this and this . A third to Dead Men Left for consistently amusing, insightful bloggery over the year.

Charlotte Street has an excellent post on 'anti-Americanism', so drop down his chimney for some mince pies and milk. Marc Mulholland is back in Northern Ireland for the holidays. He doesn't, unfortunately, report on the sign that appears at Belfast City Airport: "WELCOME TO NORTHERN IRELAND. And by the way, you're fuckin' welcome to it." (What? You dare to suggest I would make this up?) But kindly go and warm his chestnuts, and remind him that civilisation does exist beyond the sticks.


Christmas morning: another unwanted hat.

Jews Sans Frontieres is simply one of the best blogs around, and is certainly the best anti-Zionist blog on the net. I strongly urge you to fill his stocking.

Finally, before I run out of seasonal puns, the jolly Anglo-German blogger Oliver Kampf tells me he will be writing yet another self-effacing, witty and incisive missive, this time on the matter of King Herod's often misunderstood policies designed to tackle the proliferation of under-twos. Go over and give the old bird a good stuffing. Turkey won't taste so good anywhere else.

Okay, that's me for now. I may post a little pic of myself yodelling into the toilet bowl on Christmas morning, but otherwise I'm shutting up about it for a couple of days. Ho ho ho.