For those who want their alternative holidays closer to the originals:
http://curvebank.calstatela.edu/birthdayindex/dec/dec25newton/
dec25newton.htm:
> Using the "old style" of dating, Christmas Day is Sir Isaac Newton's
> Birthday.
> Born: December 25, 1642 in Woolsthorpe, Lincoln county, England

Per http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Newton.html:
> Although by the calendar in use at the time of his birth he was born
> on Christmas Day 1642, we give the date of 4 January 1643 in this
> biography which is the "corrected" Gregorian calendar date bringing it
> into line with our present calendar. (The Gregorian calendar was not
> adopted in England until 1752.)

If Isaac Newton had lived through 1752, do you think he would
have moved his birthday back to Christmas? Left it in January
and cursed his fate? Been relieved that it wasn't on Christmas
any more?

<TRIVIA>
Quantum Physics Day is closer to Saturnalia (December 17), which
also sounds pretty cool (being about freedom and all), though
not as science-philic :-).

There's also Bill of Rights Day, signed into practice by President
Franklin Delano Roosevelt on December 15, 1941, one hundred and
fifty years after the actual signing of the Bill of Rights by our
forefathers
(http://www.holidayorigins.com/html/bill_of_rights_day.html).
In true Al Gore style, George W. Bush declared December 15, 2002
as Bill of Rights Day :-) . http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/rm/15808.htm
.
</TRIVIA>

Yours in alternative winter holidays,
Kennita

On Saturday, Dec 6, 2003, at 18:28 US/Pacific, wayne radinsky wrote:
http://www.theteacherscorner.net/calendars/december.htm and

>
> So it is December when everybody celebrates Christmas, a
> Christian holiday that's really borrowed from a pagan
> holiday. What do you celebrate if you're not Christian
> and not pagan? I'm "athiest/agnostic", although I once
> took a quiz on a website that said I was "unitarian
> universalist", whatever that is. So I celebrate Quantum
> Physics Day on December 14th -- the anniversary of the
> day in 1901 that Max Planck created the concept -- and
> the word -- of "quanta" and launched the revolution
> that has taken over the world....