celebrations of the annual winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. This was a particularly popular celebration in Rome in the early days of the Christian religion. With at most only minor fudging of the dates, it was possible to adapt the celebration anticipating the lengthening of days as the harbinger of the return of spring to the birthday celebration of the Christian Messiah. Hence, the pagan festival aimed at rekindling trust among the people for the return of spring became in addition a ritual celebration to reinvigorate the belief among the faithful in the ascendance of Jesus by recognizing the time and traditions of his birth.

The practice of giving gifts as part of the celebration of Christmas can trace its roots back to the story from the Christian Bible about the Magi from the east who followed the star to Bethlehem and there presented gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh to the baby Jesus. The impact of Christmas on the national economy of the United States is now significant, representing a sizeable fraction of the year’s total revenue and an even larger preponderance of the annual profits for consumer merchandising. Given the impetus for separation of church and state, there came increasing pressure in the XX^th Century to turn the holiday away from its Christian roots and to focus towards a secular ritual, a move facilitated by the fact that so much of a state’s economy was at stake in the form of holiday expenditures. The result has been a slow but steady reorientation of the Christian holiday to a secular festival that is built around the giving of gifts and hence provides an annual focus on the Shrine of Content.

This is ritual completely focused on the social grouping that we have termed égalité. There is great irony in the coming full circle of a pagan festival, transformed for a couple of millennia into a Christian celebration, and now making its way back toward a secular ritual with as much economic as religious overtone. This is not to say that a significant element of the population, specifically the more devout Christian community, is not struggling to maintain the purely religious focus. But, the existing tension certainly delineates one of the current boundaries in the evolutionary struggle among human grouping mechanisms.

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When early humans felt thirst, they made their way to the river or spring where they could drink. When they felt hunger, they sought out nuts and berries, or perhaps they hunted for prey that they could kill and eat. Sating an appetite was a matter of individual or small group activities constrained by the physical ecosystem. As social ecosystems evolved, the accepted means for sating an appetite became the purview of subjective policy considerations. If you’re hungry, and the first cow you run across happens to belong to your neighbor, it’s considered particularly bad form to butcher it for food without first consulting with your neighbor. Instead, the appropriate system of exchange has to be acknowledged. Thus, you might be expected to take your currency, whatever that happens to be, and travel to the marketplace. There you exchange your currency for food.

Beyond questions of ownership, social stigma can also be applied to the search for sustenance. A rather common homily in rural areas is the assertion, “I’m so hungry I could eat a horse!” This is actually a more profound statement than merely specifying an appetite for food. It conveys a sense of urgency that says, generally facetiously, “I’m so hungry I’m willing to overlook social stigma in my search for food!” Indeed, in the days of horse mounted cavalry, it was a terrible admonition of the plight of an army when they had to kill their horses for food in order to survive. So, this may be a colorful description, but what does it have to do with content and the satisfying of appetites?

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