Russ, I just sent you a short e-mail last night after reading your mercury story (I didn't know if you knew it was the same person since I didn't make it clear), and you responded immediately (thank you for that), but I was wondering whether or not you got my last e-mail that I sent to your other e-mail address some days ago (I forget which day). (Sometimes I send e-mails to people and they never get them.) I just wanted to give you some background on myself, more than I can do on the forum, since I plan to stick around for probably a long time, now that I'm here. And I want to be able to talk with people one-to-one sometimes as necessary, so I created a new e-mail address just for people that I meet on the web. Mostly, though, I think it's best to stick to sharing in the forum so that other people can benefit from it. In my e-mail I mentioned something about a subject that after reading more of your posts today I now know that you don't agree with me on. And I thought it may be a good idea to bring it up for discussion here. But, first let me make it clear that I have no intention whatsoever to try to force anyone to accept my personal beliefs, nor will I accept that kind of attitude from anyone else. But I do think that God wants us to share these things and as much as we can try to become unified with each other, in HIM. Most important is that we accept and love each other in spite of the fact that we don't know everything and really just admit that we don't, humbly. That said, here is the subject: Christmas! Apparently, you don't celebrate Christmas and though I know this is common for people from different cultures, it surprises me to hear it from someone in my own culture. For me Christmas is very special, so much that when I was in the most difficult times of my life I had Christmas things all over my room all year round, and just about a month and a half ago (I'm still in a difficult time), I finally took my artificial Christmas tree out of my room after having it in there for about 8 months and though I thought I could handle this, I found it wasn't so when I laid down in my bed and got so sad that I started to cry and could not stop crying, because I needed my Christmas tree. The next day I went to the thrift store and got a miniature one and put it on a shelf and now I feel okay. This sounds very strange to most people I guess, but this is the way I am. It's because I'm missing my home so much and my Christmas tree is like a pacifier for me, but you have to wonder (for those of us who don't think we know everything already) why Christmas is so important for me, and not only me but huge numbers of people look forward to it every year and celebrate for generally a whole month. With this great and widespread involvement it seems like there must be something to it - not just something that was made up in the minds of men - just a human tradition. What do you think about it? (if you care to respond which I suspect you will)