Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Happy [url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_solstice#Ancient_Roman[/url] or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_solstice#Ancient_Roman ;

In the ancient Roman calendar, December 25 was the date of the winter solstice.^[14][15] In AD 274, the emperor Aurelian made this the date of the festival Dies Natalis Solis Invicti, the birthday of Sol Invictus or the 'Invincible Sun'.^[15][16] Gary Forsythe, Professor of Ancient History, says "This celebration would have formed a welcome addition to the seven-day period of the Saturnalia (December 17–23), Rome's most joyous holiday season since Republican times, characterized by parties, banquets, and exchanges of gifts".^[15]

A widely-held theory is that the Church chose December 25 as Christ's birthday (Dies Natalis Christi) to appropriate the Roman winter solstice festival marking the sun god's birthday (Dies Natalis Solis Invicti).^[16][15][17]

Germanic[edit]

In Anglo-Saxon England the winter solstice was generally deemed to be 25 December, and in Old English, midwinter could mean both the winter solstice and Christmas.^[18][19]

The North Germanic peoples celebrated a winter holiday called Yule. The Heimskringla, written in the 13th century by the Icelander Snorri Sturluson, describes a Yule feast hosted by the Norwegian king Haakon the Good (c. 920–961). According to Snorri, the Christian Haakon had moved Yule from "midwinter" and aligned it with the Christian Christmas celebration. Historically, this has made some scholars believe that Yule originally was a sun festival on the winter solstice. Modern scholars generally do not believe this, as midwinter in medieval Iceland was a date about four weeks after the solstice.^[20] During the Christianisation of the Germanic peoples, Yule was incorporated into the Christmas celebrations and the term and its cognates remain used to refer to Christmas in modern Northern European languages such as English and Swedish.^[21][22]

DJ...on the "birth of jesus"...[url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenogenesis[/url] or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenogenesis ;

Parthenogenesis (/ˌpɑːrθɪnoʊˈdʒɛnɪsɪs, -θɪnə-/;^[1][2] from the Greek παρθένος, parthénos, 'virgin' + γένεσις, génesis, 'creation'^[3]) is a natural form of asexual reproduction in which growth and development of embryos occur in a gamete (egg or sperm) without combining with another gamete (e.g., egg and sperm fusing).^[4] In animals, parthenogenesis means development of an embryo from an unfertilized egg cell

Parthenogenetic offspring in species that use either the XY or the X0 sex-determination system have two X chromosomes and are female.

Depending on the mechanism involved in restoring the diploid number of chromosomes, parthenogenetic offspring may have anywhere between all and half of the mother's alleles. In some types of parthenogenesis the offspring having all of the mother's genetic material are called full clones and those having only half are called half clones.

There are claims/studies indicating 1 in a billion pregnancies could be an egg-cell in a woman acting like it is fertilized and start a pregnancy without the need for sex. Since it is supposed to be "extremely rare" in humans it may be impossible to do a good scientific study...(We now have over 8 billion people on this planet...so does this mean 8 women are "clones" of their mother ?) 

With all respect-religion did bring two things;

-more conflict

-more tax....

Here in NL I am happy days will get longer (not yet warmer...) ..In "the south" you are moving into summer...Hope it will not stay that extreme hot that long...

Best wishes for all...Coming 2024 will very likely be (a lot) worse than 2023...but one may better be prepared than surprised by that knowledge...