In the United States, Great Britain, and other Christian places, it's Christmas time. In the United States, some African-Americans are preparing to celebrate Kwanzaa, a holiday invented out of whole cloth in 1966 by Dr. Maulana Karenga, then a professor at the University of California at Long Beach.

Tomorrow, in Great Britain, they will celebrate Boxing Day, historically the day when the servants got Christmas gifts from their employers (and also, apparently the feast day of St. Stephen).

Hannukah begins at sundown tonight. It's actually a minor Jewish holiday, but Christians made it into a major holiday because they figured that since Hanukkah coincided with their (Christians') major holiday, it must be major, too.

Ramadan has no relation to the month of December or to anything related to Christmas. The Islamic calendar is based on the moon, and as such, Ramadan happens at different times in different years by the Gregorian calendar. This year, for example, Ramadan began the first week of October.

George W. Bush, what have you gotten the United States for Christmas? Oh, look! It's a New York Times story about how the NSA harvested even more information than we could have imagined from their semi-legal wiretaps.

Merry Christmas!