Christmas practices of course also have roots in pre-Christian Roman traditions and in Germanic pagan traditions. What angered me about your story was your opening, in which you presume to lecture everyone about a holiday that belongs to all of us.

I'm a gay man and a former HIV educator/activist who views Christianity through the lens of my own personal life experiences, which have taught me that Christianity, except for a fringe minority of very progressive or deconstructing people, is an arrogant, judgmental, exclusionary, disgusting religion.

I know from decades of personal experience how evil most Christians are and how cruel and awful traditionalist Christian theology is.

After all, I have been a target of the evil practically my entire live, from the time I rejected conversion therapy my pastor pushed on me when I was 16 and was then ostracized by my mainstream Baptist congregation.

I could go one. But suffice it to say that barely a day goes by that I'm not reminded that Protestant Christians largely reject me as an "abomination" and Catholic nuns and priests fervently embrace the official Catechism, which teaches that I am (literally!) "depraved" and disordered."

That's not to even mention that Pope Francis, all propaganda to the contrary, is a thoroughly disgusting homophobic pig. He illustrated that perfectly near the end of 2024 when on two separate occasions he instructed fellow priests and bishops to disqualify gay candidates for the priesthood because, and I quote, "There is already too much faggotry in the Vatican."

He spoke in Italian but my Italian gay friends assure me the word he chose is every bit as stigmatizing in Italian as "faggot" is in English. That's not to even mention that at the recently concluded Synod on Synodality, he took LGBTQ reform off the table by executive fiat -- meaning he refuses to even consider reforming the doctrines that call us depraved and disordered.

All that to say that like most Christians, Francis is an arrogant, judgemental, disgusting person.

It's that arrogant judgmentalism I called out in your article, which reeks of smug self-importance and superiority. You simply presume the right to dictate what others "should" do. Your word.

This is what is so disgusting about Christianity in general ... an arrogant sense of self-righteous superiority.