Celebrating Christmas -or not

I know it's late -but perhaps now's the time to think about it before it's too late and Xmas 2004 is nearly upon us- but I clocked this on Maggi Dawn's blog and it attracted me because it says pretty much what I've been suggesting, on the quiet [bah! humbug!] for years -partly based on my own experience of having lived in Spain over 1979-80 and finding Christmas day celebrated in a way more like most people in England celebrate Easter [bit of holiday, big food ...] and the whole present stuff left till "Reyes" [="Kings"]. Given what is being said about sales figures before and after Christmas day perhaps the idea of mutating how we do Yuletide is one whose time has come?

The other thing we could think of is reclaiming Christmas as a twelve-day feast ending with Epiphany ... How about spreading out all the good stuff over 12 days ... Not rushing to get presents and cards there by 24 December 'cos we're comfortable with getting there somewhere in the 12-day ... perhaps now with time to deliver stuff ourselves, personally, with the gift of time .... go on -you know you want to!

All of which also gets me wondering: what do AltWorship groups do with Christmas -we've been a bit quiet about that....