winking lights? do lights wink or blink?

say what you want about xmas, but this is one area where christianity kicks buddhism's butt. buddhism does not have any cool holidays that can hold a candle to the magic of xmas.

@Alien: Can you explain how Christmas concentrates wealth? If you are suggesting that business activity inherently concentrates wealth, I am very interested how that achieved.

(I assume, by 'business activity', you are referring to capitalist business activity): It's achieved through the concept of private ownership of the means of production and of distribution, and of the collectively-produced commodity - everybody works, profits from the work go disproportionately to the owners of tools, factories, sales outlets, commodities etc. At Christmas a lot of things are sold and a lot of profits are generated.

@Magnifico: but do the things you like about Christmas have much to do with Christianity?

Somewhat related topic: Compared with other Chinese cities, does Kunming have atypically higher number of christian missionaries? Same question, Yunnan versus other provinces? If yes, why? Historical reasons, other?

@husky: good question, but we need to define what is meant by 'missionaries'. I don't know the current answer, but historically Yunnan has not been as much a focus of western Protestant or Catholic missionary activity as many other areas of China.

pagans worshipped THE SUN.
christians worship on SUNday.

pagans celebrated the winter solstice from Dec 22 - 25 when the SUN arose from the dead (ie days of lowest sunlight)

and sun readers worshiped melinda messenger, sam fox, and before that linda lusardi. merry xmas everyone and keep smilin

@Alien: Now I see how you get the concentration of wealth. You describe Marx's idea where he finds the capitalist as owner at odds with the worker collective resulting in exploitation of workers and this exploitation make the capitalist rich. Given that Marx, and his buddy Friedrich, pretty much defined Capitalism it is so easy to accept Marxism (aren't you glad we don't need to say Engelsism?) as the way it is.

Unfortunately, I consider Socialism and Marxism to be religions. Discussing these related faiths is difficult as the faithful employ language and ideological constructs manufactured to be self serving and dogmatic to say nothing of the fact they don't work. I refer to the DPRK and Cuba. Oh, and of course there is no wealth concentration in China. Right?

I think Socialism and Marxism may well be very much religions to many. The DPRK, Cuba and China are founded on Marxist-leninist principles and I agree that many things in these countries have not worked, and that some have (but don't push me to find one vis-a-vis the DPRK). But this has nothing to do with Marx's analysis of how capitalism does or doesn't work. How do you think the capitalist gets rich?