From my family to yours, I wish you a safe, blessed and joyful Christmas. I hope the joy of family and friends spreads warmth and compassion as we celebrate the birth of one of the greatest men in human history.

I also wish you a calm mind, a stress-free home and blessed conversation around the dinner table. Let political, economic and opinionated debate subside while we celebrate the gifts and blessings of another gracious year.

I wholeheartedly believe in the joyfulness and charity of the Christmas season. Many individuals choose to reject the “Christmas Season” and instead celebrate the “Holiday Season” for purposes of uniformity and inclusion. I understand this motive. It eliminates confusion, confrontation and exclusion.

But I still choose to celebrate Christmas.

There is historical fact proving that Christ was not born on Christmas day. There is also historical fact proving early Christians chose the Pagan holiday of Saturnalia to celebrate the birth of their saviour. And whether Christmas today is more a holiday celebrating capitalism and gift-giving than it is a celebration of the birth of a great man is entirely irrelevant.

In fact, all of those facts are irrelevant. The spirit of Christmas is founded in the sole fact that a baby boy was born into a world ripe for change. There are countless individuals and entire theories dedicated to the denouncement of the existence of Jesus Christ. Miracles and divine power aside, Jesus Christ the man changed the world at one point in history. Whether Jesus Christ the man possessed divine power is a question of your own faith-base. But there is little doubt that a person changed the course of human history at some point thousands of years ago.

No matter your faith, a man who had the ability to change the course of human history, for better or for worse, deserves an annual celebration. We celebrate war holidays, both victories and losses, on an annual basis. We celebrate nationalist holidays despite the means to the end of that nationalist holiday. We even celebrate holidays honouring monarchies that are nearly powerless today. Why can’t a man, who altered human history thousands of years ago, have one day for celebration?

One of the most talented and insightful tech writers on the Internet today, Matt Gemmell, appears to be a devout atheist. I do not know Matt and I can not rightly assume that he is a faith-free individual. But, “Wishes”, one of Matt Gemmell’s recent articles, outlines prayer and faith as “pitiful self-projections”:

Wishes themselves, or prayers, are empty pleadings – heard by no-one, and unable to alter outcomes in any way. They may make us feel better, and that’s something to be considered on its own merit, but there’s no other effect. We all know this.

In light of "Wishes", Matt recently tweeted about his family’s Christmas holiday:

Anyway, to hell with the misogynist lunatics. It’s capitalism-mas! My wife is now on holiday. Our home is deity-free and gift-stocked!