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Next Sunday is my LDS ward's Primary Christmas program. During sacrament meeting a mob of kids will sing and fidget about the birth of Jesus Christ.

Ironically, the program will be narrated by the least spiritual person in the entire congregation. Me.

I'm not sure why I was tapped for the job, whether it's punishment for being irreverent at inopportune moments, a subtle invitation to change my ways, or a left-handed reward for accepting a job in the nursery. Whatever. I agreed to do it.

But that was before I read the script. When it was delivered to me a couple of weeks later, I tossed it on my desk and forgot about it until this morning.

Despair, shock and even outright horror would be accurate descriptions of my feelings when I finally read it. In the entire program there is not a single mention of the central figure of Christmas — Santa Claus.

Do-gooders have long battled to make Jesus pre-eminent on the day he shares with Santa Claus. Some churches have even gone so far as to ban St. Nick from their annual Christmas parties, choosing instead to focus on sheep, wise men and a virgin birth.

I'm not saying that stuff is bad. I'm saying it shouldn't have to compete with Xbox, iPad and smartphones for a kid's attention on Jesus' birthday.

For starters, it's a losing battle. I don't care how proud you are of your kids while they're braying "Joy to the World" before the congregation, the actual thoughts in their grubby heads have more to do with what they expect to get for Christmas.

The competition for attention on Christendom's holiest day of the year has been a bitter protracted struggle ever since someone — in a moment of spectacular idiocy — decided that Claus (gluttony) and Christ (redemption) should share the same bill.

Since then, killjoy church people have been insisting that Christmas is more of a time to celebrate "away in a manger" than "up on the housetop."

Ironically, it's church's fault. December 25 was a pagan holiday celebrated with orgies, bigotry and murder long before it was co-opted by religion as the birthday of Jesus.

Everyone except the dimwitted understands that Jesus was not born on December 25. I won't get into the historical details (look them up yourselves), but I think it's fair to say that no one knows the day (or the exact year for that matter) when Jesus was born.

There's an easy solution to the problem. Let's move the Lord's birthday to another day of the year. That way there's no conflict.

Why shouldn't Santa move to another day, you ask? It was church that arranged the confusion in the first place, so it ought to be church's responsibility to fix it.

I'll tell you why it won't happen. We'll keep celebrating the birth of Jesus on Dec. 25 because tradition is more important to human beings than common sense.

We'll do it for the same reason the lights on the tree have to go counter-clockwise, presents get opened on Christmas Day rather than Christmas Eve, and we hang a poisonous weed to kiss under — because we have always done it that way.

Sadly, there are no bigger traditionalists than the religious-minded. We'll hang onto long-standing conventions even if it kills us — which has actually happened. A lot.

Let's move the Savior's birthday to a more reasonable day, say, oh, June 27. There's nothing happening then except National Newspaper Columnists Day.

Since no one knew it was that before I mentioned it, or cares now that they do know, it's the perfect day to celebrate the Lord's birthday. He'll have it entirely to himself.

And I, for one newspaper columnist, won't mind a bit.

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