Of course December 25 is a day with a rich history of its own, predating the competing inanities of our decadent age. On December 25 274 the Roman Emperor Aurelian consecrated a temple to the Cultus Solis Invictis, the Cult of the Invincible Sun, to mark his victories over the Syrian rebel queen Zenobia. The cult was a kind of merger of all the sun gods, a typically Roman solution to the thorny problem of divine job demarcation.

They'd been doing this for centuries. The Roman name for Bath was Aquae Sulis, which means The waters of Sulis. When the Romans got to Bath, they found the worship of Sulis already established, and declared that Sulis was actually another incarnation of their goddess Minerva. If their local administrator had been Thomas More he'd have insisted on using the name Minerva, and burnt anyone who kept on calling her Sulis, but the pagan Romans had more sense, and let people carry on as they always had done.

In the fourth century AD Christianity gained a stranglehold on the Empire, and this excellent pluralistic tradition disappeared, to replaced by the familiar cycle of blood letting. For if there's only one God, different views of him can only survive in competition with each other. It's frustrating to think that if the Romans hadn't handed their Empire over to their most poisonous cult we might have gone straight to polytheism to secularism without the tedious bit in the middle.

And guess which date they decided to use for their God's birthday. Got it in one. The Church is the original Grinch. They stole Christmas.

Real people were also born today, so many happy returns to Isaac Newton (1642-1727), Humphrey Bogart (1999-1957), Quentin Crisp (1908-1999), Louise Bourgeois (b. 1911), Noel Redding (b. 1945) and Annie Lennox (b. 1954).

Mostly, though, given the seasonal theme, happy fiftieth birthday to Shane MacGowan. If only Kirsty McColl was still around to celebrate with you. How very odd that you should be the one to survive.