While Christmas draws near, Pastor John Foster won’t be decorating a tree, shopping for last-minute gifts or working on a holiday sermon for his flock. After all, it’s been 50 years since Christmas was anything more than a day of the week to him.
He’s one of very few American Christians who follow what used to be the norm in many Protestant denominations--rejecting the celebration of Christmas on religious grounds, AP reported.
“People don’t think of it this way, but it’s really a secular holiday,“ said Foster, pastor to a United Church of God congregation in Princeton, West Virginia. He last celebrated Christmas when he was 8.
His church’s objection to Christmas is rare among US Christians. Gallup polls from 1994 to 2005 consistently show that more than 90 percent of adults say they celebrate Christmas, including 84 percent of non-Christians.
That’s a huge change from an earlier era, when many Protestants ignored or actively opposed the holiday. But as it gradually became popular as a family celebration, churches followed their members in making peace with Christmas.
The change did not happen overnight.
Through much of the 19th century, schools and businesses remained open, Congress met in session and some churches closed their doors, lest errant worshippers try to furtively commemorate the day.
“The whole culture didn’t stop for Christmas,“ said Bruce Forbes, a religious studies professor at Morningside College in Sioux City, Iowa. “Government went on as usual, business went on as usual, school went on as usual.“
In researching his book, “Christmas: A Candid History,“ Forbes discovered that major American denominations--Presbyterians, Baptists, Quakers, Methodists and Congregationalists--either ignored the holiday or actively discouraged it until the late 19th century.
That rejection was rooted in the lack of biblical sanction for Dec. 25 as the date of Jesus’ birth, as well as suspicion toward traditions that developed after the earliest days of Christianity.
In colonial New England, this disapproval extended to actually making the holiday illegal, with celebration punishable by a fine.
Now part of the United Church of Christ, Old South not only has a Christmas tree, but encourages its 650 or so members to exchange Christmas presents--although the focus is on charitable donations and service, rather than shopping.
Like Sewall’s successors, the mainline Protestant churches have learned to accommodate Christmas.
University of Texas history professor Penne Restad said, “Christmas became acceptable as a family-centered holiday once it lost its overtly religious significance.“
“It’s common knowledge that Christmas and its customs have nothing to do with the Bible,“ said Clyde Kilough, president of the United Church of God, which has branches all over the world.

A rare 710-year-old copy of the Magna Carta, among the most important historical documents ever to hit the auction block, sold for $21.3 million at Sotheby’s.
The document was bought by a Washington businessman who said he was determined to see it remain in the United States, where it has been on display at the National Archives and Records Administration since 1988, Reuters reported.
The last remaining copy in the United States and the last in private hands, the Magna Carta, one of 17 known to exist, was sold by The Perot Foundation, created by billionaire former US presidential candidate Ross Perot to make philanthropic grants.
The foundation acquired it from the collections of the Brudenell family of Deene Park in Northamptonshire in 1984.
“It’s a good day for our country,“ said David Rubenstein, a lawyer and founder of The Carlyle Group, a private equities firm, told reporters after he made the extraordinary purchase, adding that he had arrived just minutes before the sale and very nearly missed out.
The Magna Carta, which Sotheby’s called “the most important document in the world,“ established the rights of the English people and curbed the power of the king.
The US Constitution includes ideas and phrases taken almost directly from the charter, which rebellious barons forced their oppressive King John to sign in 1215.
Sotheby’s said the Magna Carta was ratified and reissued with each monarch who succeeded John. It was enacted as law in 1297 by the British parliament when it was reissued by King Edward I.
The record for a document or manuscript at auction is held by Leonardo da Vinci’s “Codex“ manuscript, which sold for $30.8 million at Christie’s in 1994.

Iraqi archeologists working in a city south of Baghdad unearthed more than 1,000 antiquities and delivered them to the National Museum, which has struggled to rebuild its collection since it was looted in the US-led invasion.
The museum has been closed to the public since 2003, but curators have been trying to recover some of the 15,000 stolen relics and piece together a collection, AP reported.
Qais Hussein, who directs Iraqi archeological digs, said the antiquities were discovered by three teams at the beginning of the year in the Shiite city of Diwaniyah, 130 kilometers (80 miles) south of Baghdad.
Hussein did not say when the National Museum would be open to the public.
The looting of the museum triggered sharp criticism of US forces both in Iraq and abroad.
Museum curators and archeologists worldwide blamed the United States for not preventing the theft of thousands of treasures, some of them dating from the earliest days of human history.

Peter Handke

Notes and work papers of the avant-garde Austrian writer Peter Handke for 500,000 euros ($722,000), the Austrian national library said it has acquired handwritten manuscripts,The papers, acquired directly from the author himself--who lives in France-- comprised several thousand papers dating back 20 years, including the manuscripts of a number of novels and plays, the library said, AFP reported.
The purchase was both a way of supporting “one of Europe’s great poets, as well as laying the foundation for an exhaustive centre of Handke research,“ culture minister Claudia Schmied told a new conference.
The Austrian culture ministry is helping to finance the acquisition.
“I’m happy that my manuscripts are now safe,“ joked Handke in a video message.
Considered one of the most important writers of his generation, Peter Handke was born in 1941 in Griffen, in the state of Carinthia in southern Austria. He has lived in Chaville, near Paris, since 1991.
Even though his home country paid homage to Handke, celebrating his 65th birthday on December 6, the writer has never expressed any intention of returning to Austria to work.
“At least in the form of his writings, Peter Handke has come back to Austria,“ said the national library’s director Johanna Rachinger.
Long regarded as an “enfant terrible“ of Austrian letters, Peter Handke stirred even deeper controversy in recent years by supporting former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic.
His attendance at Milosevic’s funeral on March 18, 2006, and public remarks he made there led the Comedie Francaise in Paris to pull a planned production of one his works there this year.

The Egg House has a price tag of $ 10 million.

Possibly the most unusual private home in the Russian capital, constructed in the shape of a giant egg, is up for sale.
Completed in 2002, the building serves as a counter-argument for those who consider Moscow’s architecture grey and boring, said Russiatoday.
It’s been nick-named the Faberge house, after the elaborate creations associated with Russia’s royal jeweler. The home has a price tag of $ 10 million.

An Iranian woman, in northern Gilan province, makes rug out of straw in a handicraft exhibition.

Some 70 percent of Hong Kong residents think sidewalk tea cafes are an intrinsic part of their cultural heritage and want them given protected status by the United Nations, according to a recent poll.
The cafes, where you can sit street-side and sip strong milky tea strained through what looks like pantyhose, or feast on carbohydrates with a slice of buttery toast as thick as a book, are hugely popular in Hong Kong, AP reported.
Many have been around for decades and are crammed morning to night with students, housewives, businessmen and tourists, slurping up lunchtime bowls of instant noodles and watching the world go by.
But many fear this unique aspect of Hong Kong’s culture--a quirky blend of traditional Chinese and British colonialism--will be lost amid a modernization drive that has already seen many heritage sites torn down for property development.
Hong Kong was ruled by Britain for 155 years until it was handed back to China in 1997.

Collectors of genuine Japanese swords are exempt from the ban.

Britain said it would ban the sale of samurai swords because the weapons had been used in a number of serious, high-profile attacks.
The Home Office (Britain’s Interior Ministry) said the swords would be added to its Offensive Weapons Order from April next year, meaning they could not be imported, sold or hired, Reuters reported.
However collectors of genuine Japanese swords and those used by martial arts enthusiasts would be exempt from the ban.
“In the wrong hands, samurai swords are dangerous weapons,“ Home Office Minister Vernon Coaker said.
“We recognize it is the cheap, easily available samurai swords which are being used in crime and not the genuine more expensive samurai swords which are of interest to collectors and martial arts enthusiasts.“
The Association of Chief Police Officers said the swords were not a common weapon but they had been used in a number of significant incidents.
In 2000, Robert Ashman murdered a Liberal Democrat councilor at the offices of Cheltenham MP Nigel Jones, who was also seriously hurt in the attack.
A year earlier, Eden Strang seriously wounded 11 people when he went on the rampage with a samurai sword at a Roman Catholic Church near his home in Thornton Heath, south London.

The Eurasia Writers’ Association (AYB) is trying to find early Turkic linguist Mahmud Al-Kashgari’s long-lost Turkish grammar book, Kitabu Cevahiru’n Nahv Fi Lughat Al-Turk, which is believed to be the first grammar book on the Turkish language.
The association announced that the person to find the book would be awarded with 1,000 Cumhuriyet golden coins--a haul worth around YTL 226,000, Todayszaman said.
The chairman of the association, Yakup Deliomeroglu, told reporters that the association has announced 2008 as “the Year of Al-Kashgari,“ marking the 1,000th anniversary of his birth. Deliomeroglu added: “We know that the book exists, however, no one has seen it so far. We hope that this book turns up like the Diwan Ul-Lughat Al-Turk (Collection of Turkic words), thus contributing to our cultural heritage.“
Deliomeroglu stated that some scholars working on ancient monuments have also conducted some research to find the long-lost book, saying that the award being given is enticing enough to find it. “When this Turkish grammar book was written, there wasn’t any grammar work on major languages such as French, German and Russian, which are believed to be the largest surviving languages today,“ he also said.
Underlining the importance of Al-Kashgari’s book for both Turkey and the history of humanity and languages, Deliomeroglu also emphasized that the book would shed light on some points of debate concerning Turkish language grammar among various Turkic nations.
He asserted that should the book be found, it would provide immeasurable help to solve the current problems of Turkish language.
The Diwan Ul-Lughat Al-Turk, written by Al-Kashgari between 1072 and 1074, is known to be the first Turkish dictionary.