Your 4-year-old wanders into the living room, plops down on the floor near your easy chair, looks up and asks:

“Daddy, what is Christmas?”

And you think to yourself, can I really answer such a question?

The easy answer is that today is a celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ.

But is Dec. 25 really the day Jesus was born?

No one alive really knows for sure.

Christian leaders in 336 A.D. set the date to Dec. 25 in an attempt to counteract the popularity of a pagan holiday in Rome that celebrated the winter solstice.

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Christmas is a holiday for just about everyone, and a holy day for many.

In this country, it is perhaps the biggest single event of the year - especially for children.

And for members of the Christian religions, it is a defining day on their religious calendar.

The tradition of gift-giving seems to have begun with the gifts that the Magi, better known to most of us as the Wise Men, brought to Jesus.

As told in the Bible's book of Matthew, “On coming to the house they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshipped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold and of incense and of myrrh.”

Some would argue that particular Bible story started the modern, mad rush to shopping malls in the days before Christmas.

In fact, no one was really in the habit of exchanging gifts until late in the 1800s.

The introduction of the Santa Claus story, based on the generosity of Saint Nicholas and in concert with a retailing blitz that has grown since the turn of the century, has made gift-giving a new focus of the Christmas tradition.

The Santa story - including the sleigh, reindeer and chimney-diving with a bag full of gifts - sprang mostly from two publishing events in the 1800s.

Clement Moore wrote “The Night Before Christmas” in 1822 for his family. It was picked up by a newspaper, then reprinted in magazines and thus spread around the world.

Sometime in the latter part of the century, Harper's Weekly magazine ran a series of engravings by Thomas Nast, and the concepts of Santa's workshop, Santa reading letters, Santa checking his list, etc., were born.

So now you know a little something about the origins of Christmas, and how the day has evolved over the centuries, but what about the actual spirit of the holiday?

Recently on these pages, a debate has raged over the inclination to erase specific religious references from the Christmas holiday season.

Some store owners and managers - in an effort not to offend non-Christians and those of other religions - have ordered their clerks to offer something non-specific, such as “happy holidays” or “season's greetings,” instead of “Merry Christmas.”

We understand the intent, but we also believe we all need to be more tolerant of each other's points of view and of our religious beliefs, whatever they may be.

There is no logical or moral reason to neuter the meaning of a holiday that is clearly, and without doubt, a celebration of the birth of Christ.

If you don't subscribe to or believe in that concept, just try to indulge those who do.

After all, you're only going to hear “Merry Christmas” for a few weeks out of the year.

You don't really have to believe to enjoy the benefits, warmth and cheer of this season.

December 25, 2005