This is the one time of year when I'm ready to declare war on Christmas myself. It's impossible to venture into a store without Christmas music and Christmas displays. Christmas catalogs are over stuffing mailboxes all over the land. At this time of year this seems like anything but a religious holiday. Our commercial society's wildly overdone winter solstice gift giving rituals look sometimes like paganism's revenge. The early Christians turned the pagan Saturnalia feast of ancient Rome into a Christian holiday; today the merchandisers are taking it back. The dissonance won't be...