First Penguins, Now Cats and Rabbits: The Santa Dress-Up Continues

One can learn many things by visiting the web site of Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency. It's an often eye-opening look into how that government reports the world – sometimes much fairer than you'd expect, other times depressingly to form (such as its coverage of the recent Nobel Peace Prize brouhaha).

I noted a while ago a photo feature on the Xinhua site about penguins dressed as Santa. Now, Xinhua comes back with not one but two photo features on Santa-clad animals: rabbits and cats.

So go ahead and click through to those features for your holiday cute-overload.

As to why officially atheist China is paying so much attention to Christmas, your guess is as good as mine.

What's Wrong with Advent Calendars?

No, I'm not getting on board with the "war against Christmas" fake controversy ginned up by the Fox political apparatchiks.

But consider this: On a trip to Walgreen's today to pick up some more wrapping paper, I noticed some advent calendars. You remember them: You open a little window or box on the calendar for each day leading up to Christmas. I have one on the wall outside my office. Open up each day and you get a little piece of chocolate.

But mixed in with the advent calendars and even outnumbering them at Walgreens were a bunch of Disney-themed "Count-down to Christmas Calendars" which were, of course, advent calendars, just sans anything Christmasy and just promoting some Disney movie property. Forget about the fact that you don't need to hyphenate most of the words in the calendar's title. I suspect this renaming of the calendar was probably done not out of an anti-religious bias, as some would claim. It was probably done out of misguided sensitivity to religious folks, so that Disney wasn't in the business of selling The Little Mermaid in a religious calendar setting.

Still, buy your kid a real advent calendar, with real chocolate, and not some overpriced Disney movie advertisement. They'll thank you some day.

Christmas-Themed Mock Movie Posters

Rejecting Sobriety has been producing some great fake movie posters, putting a yuletide twist on well-known film posters. See them all.

Penguins Dressed as Santa

Yet another critical development where America should be leading, but Korea takes the lead instead:

Ben Bova on Christmas: Deciphering Santa's Political Preference

Ben Bova is a major figure in the science fiction landscape, having authored numerous views, been at the vanguard of arguing the scientific point of view, and edited Analog and Omni magazines. He's still at it, producing books and more, but a quick web search this morning revealed that he also writes a column for his local newspaper, the Naples News, in Florida.

In one of his latest columns for that paper, he tackles the toughest question of all: Is Santa a Democrat or Republican? If you're used to Bova writing tough-as-nails science-and-political thrillers, you might want to check out his column for a little Christmas holiday cheer.

Personally, I think Santa's showing his northern European ("old Europe," in Donald Rumsfeld's eyes) roots with his extravagant giveaway of toys to kids, an overindulgence that simply can't be easily understood in this economic climate. The real question is whether he's a Christian Democrat or a Social Democrat. Any ideas?

Christmas Time

Have a happy – and meaningful – Chrismas.