Christmas, war. On a drive to my local mall, while flipping through the stations, I settled on that old John Lennon Christmas song - you know the one "So this is Christmas, and what have you done? Another year over, and a new one just begun." Happy enough, sure, and I sang along, but maybe the song isn't so happy, because I started to cry as the children sang "War is over, if you want it". Lets hope its a good one, without any tears. Christmas is a truly poignant time for me, and for all westerners. It is clear to me that the holiday loses none of its meaning and power by being separated from an ancient myth.

In the northern hemisphere, where most of earth's land mass has accumulated, starting in September, the sun begins to drift south, the direction we call down. It goes down, down, down further and further, plunging the earth into the cold - a cold like that of outer space, where we would have no sun to warm us. Then on December 21, it stops going down, and it sits there. On the southern edge of the horizon. We're left to build fire, wrap ourselves in cloaks, and huddle, hoping that the sun will rise again and the days will lengthen, and we can grow crops and live again. Three days and no change. Then, like a miracle, the sun begins to creep northward on December 25. It is no wonder that a very powerful cult on the global stage has taken this date as its biggest holiday. Biggest, yes, but perhaps not the most important. That tells us something as well. Christmas does not celebrate the act of Jesus saving everyone from original sin. Presumably, that should be the biggest one. But the fact is that in dark times, we want light.

They didn't have Christmas in Vietnam, and they don't have it in Iraq, but it might just be the best ideological export to the rest of the world. Join hands, give of yourself, and love. And so Happy Christmas, I can't stop crying.

And Billy Joel has a new Christmas Song, for the soldiers, I guess. Some say it is insensitive, since over there they practice Islam. My colleague spent two months in Kuwait and said there were two Christian churches in the entire country. She got there on the first day of Ramadan. She accidentally drank some water outside the airport and got some weird looks. Only later did she realize that she could have been arrested. But thats not the point. M*A*S*H featured it - what is a holiday in a war zone? What is the holiday of peace and love - what can it mean in a place where every horror you can think of happens, every day.

War is not over, we cannot take it anymore. It's Christmas in Falluja.