about_time belly fire Sure, I'd like to help. You know I would. But you're not telling me what you need. Only what you want. It's about time you realized the difference. 020731 ... living traditions "Like Father Time, Father Christmas is concerned with the annual cycle of time. But his iconography tallies the ongoing years for a whole family or people. He juxtaposes age with birth, but he does not speak to us of a cutting down at death. Also, both in the past and in the present, Father Christmas has only been concerned with material wealth as something to be consumed or given away in quantities quite unequaled in any other part of the year. Father Time's iconography does not relate him to any particular day in the calendar. But Father Christmas is the patriarch who comes each year to be present at the rebirth of the year that is to succeed. He personifies a festival that precedes not merely Christ but even the habit of relating the New Year to the winter solstice [the golden age of Chronos]. We shall look briefly at a variety of dates on which the New Year was celebrated before being concerned with Father Christmas and the dualities inherent in the patriarch himself." Patriarchs of Time, Samuel L. Macey, courtesy the university library. 031129 what's it to you? who go blather from