Pictures: Fungi Get Into the Holiday Spirit

Photograph courtesy Stephanie Mounaud, J. Craig Venter Institute

Mounaud combined different fungi to create a Santa hat and spell out a holiday message.

Different fungal grow at different rates, so Mounaud's artwork rarely lasts for long. There's only a short window of time when they actually look like what they're suppose to.

"You do have to keep that in perspective when you're making these creations," she said.

For example, the A. flavus fungi that she used to write this message from Santa grows very quickly. "The next day, after looking at this plate, it didn't say 'Ho Ho Ho.' It said 'blah blah blah,'" Mounaud said.

The message also eventually turned green, which was the color she was initially after. "It was a really nice green, which is what I was hoping for. But yellow will do," she said.

The hat was particularly challenging. The fungus used to create it "was troubling because at different temperatures it grows differently. The pigment in this one forms at room temperature but this type of growth needed higher temperatures," Mounaud said.

Not all fungus will grow nicely together. For example, in the hat, "N. fischeri [the brim and ball] did not want to play nice with the P. marneffei [red part of hat] ... so they remained slightly separated."

Published December 21, 2012

Read More..

Departing Secretary of State Clinton's Legacy of Firsts

After 31 years of public service, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton leaves the limelight behind.

On Friday, President Obama nominated Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., to take her place as secretary of state, leaving Clinton to help him move in and then bow out.

Over the past three decades, Clinton has served her country in one way or another, a tenure that was full of firsts.

She was the only first lady to refuse the traditional cookie bake off and the first secretary of state to visit more than 100 countries. She served under the first black president and was the first first lady to have an office in the West Wing of the White House. Clinton was the first secretary of state to visit East Timor, and the first first lady to later win elective office. And long before she ever appeared on a ballot, Clinton was the first child born to Hugh and Dorothy Rodham.

Hillary Clinton Through the Years

Her departure from the State Department does not come as a surprise. For the past year, she has made clear her intentions to step down and said her goodbyes at outposts all over the world.

"It's important for me to step off this incredibly high wire I've been on," Clinton said after casting her ballot in November's presidential election, "to take stock of the rest of my life."

Laurent Gillieron/AFP/Getty Images

President Obama Nominates Sen. John Kerry for Secretary of State Watch Video

Barbara Walters' 10 Most Fascinating People: Hillary Clinton Watch Video

'This Week' Roundtable: Hillary Clinton in 2016? Watch Video

Recently, she told ABC's Barbara Walters she's looking forward to taking a step back, "maybe do some reading and writing and speaking and teaching."

In October, she took the blame for State Department security failures that led to the death of four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens, in Benghazi, Libya. It was a move that signaled a willingness to put politics aside and embrace responsibility.

I take responsibility," Clinton said a month after the attack in an interview in Lima, Peru. "I'm in charge of the State Department's 60,000-plus people all over the world, 275 posts.

"The president and the vice president wouldn't be knowledgeable about specific decisions that are made by security professionals," Clinton said, a clear attempt to absolve a president who was up for re-election of blame with little regard for her own popularity.

At the end of November, Clinton reflected on her accomplishments as secretary of state over the past four years in two wide-ranging speeches on foreign policy.

Her four years of work focused on advancing rights for women and religious minorities across the globe, helping to maintain the tenuous peace between Israelis and Palestinians, discouraging Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons and, in her own words, "advancing a new approach to development that puts human dignity and self-sufficiency at the heart of our efforts."

Clinton reflected on her travels to more than 112 countries, calling it "shoe-leather diplomacy," and emphasizing the importance of being on the ground.

"I have found it highly ironic that, in today's world, when we can be anywhere virtually, more than ever people want us to show up, actually," she said at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. "Somebody said to me the other day, 'I look at your travel schedule.  Why Togo?  Why the Cook Islands?'  No secretary of state had ever been to Togo before.  Togo happens to be on the U.N. Security Council.  Going there, making the personal investment, has a real strategic purpose."

Though Clinton took political heat this year for her role in the Benghazi attack, her global colleagues joked and prodded her about a second presidential run at each increment of her long-term farewell. The popular Democrat continues to deny she'll run.

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Today on New Scientist: 21 December 2012

Cadaver stem cells offer new hope of life after death

Stem cells can be extracted from bone marrow five days after death to be used in life-saving treatments

Apple's patents under fire at US patent office

The tech firm is skating on thin ice with some of the patents that won it a $1 billion settlement against Samsung

Himalayan dam-building threatens endemic species

The world's highest mountains look set to become home to a huge number of dams - good news for clean energy but bad news for biodiversity

Astrophile: Black hole exposed as a dwarf in disguise

A white dwarf star caught mimicking a black hole's X-ray flashes may be the first in a new class of binary star systems

Blind juggling robot keeps a ball in the air for hours

The robot, which has no visual sensors, can juggle a ball flawlessly by analysing its trajectory

Studio sessions show how Bengalese finch stays in tune

This songbird doesn't need technological aids to stay in tune - and it's smart enough to not worry when it hears notes that are too far off to be true

Giant tooth hints at truly monumental dinosaur

A lone tooth found in Argentina may have belonged to a dinosaur even larger than those we know of, but what to call it?

Avian flu virus learns to fly without wings

A strain of bird flu that hit the Netherlands in 2003 travelled by air, a hitherto suspected by unproven route of transmission

Feedback: Are wind turbines really fans?

A tale of "disease-spreading" wind farms, the trouble with quantifying "don't know", the death of parody in the UK, and more

The link between devaluing animals and discrimination

Our feelings about other animals have important consequences for how we treat humans, say prejudice researchers Gordon Hodson and Kimberly Costello

Best videos of 2012: First motion MRI of unborn twins

Watch twins fight for space in the womb, as we reach number 6 in our countdown of the top videos of the year

2012 Flash Fiction winner: Sleep by Richard Clarke

Congratulations to Richard Clarke, who won the 2012 New Scientist Flash Fiction competition with a clever work of satire

Urban Byzantine monks gave in to temptation

They were supposed to live on an ascetic diet of mainly bread and water, but the monks in 6th-century Jerusalem were tucking into animal products

The pregnant promise of fetal medicine

As prenatal diagnosis and treatment advance, we are entering difficult ethical territory

2013 Smart Guide: Searching for human origins in Asia

Africa is where humanity began, where we took our first steps, but those interested in the latest cool stuff on our origins should now look to Asia instead

The end of the world is an opportunity, not a threat

Don't waste time bemoaning the demise of the old order; get on with building the new one

Victorian counting device gets speedy quantum makeover

A photon-based version of a 19th-century mechanical device could bring quantum computers a step closer

Did learning to fly give bats super-immunity?

When bats first took to the air, something changed in their DNA which may have triggered their incredible immunity to viruses

Van-sized space rock is a cosmic oddball

Fragments from a meteor that exploded over California in April are unusually low in amino acids, putting a twist on one theory of how life on Earth began

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New diagnostic kit allows testing for ricin poisoning

SINGAPORE: A new diagnostic kit developed by Singapore's DSO National Laboratories and the Defence Science Technology Organisation (DSTO) in Australia will allow for the testing of a potent toxin, known as ricin, in humans.

Ricin is found in the common castor bean plant and oil produced from the plant is widely used industrially.

A dose as small as a few grains of salt can kill an adult human if it is inhaled or injected.

The danger of ricin poisoning lies in the symptoms exhibited, which are similar to common food poisoning or respiratory illness.

This makes the diagnosis of ricin poisoning particularly challenging.

Ricin has also been known to be used in biological warfare.

With the new kit, ricin poisoning can be immediately detected, by running human samples such blood and stools, through the kit.

"For this test, we only need 50 micro-litres of sample. That's probably equivalent to two drops if you do a fingerprick," said Chen Hsiao Ying, senior technical staff at the Defence, Medical & Environmental Research Institute.

A person can only be tested after ricin has been in the body for at least eight hours.

Current diagnostic kits can test for ricin contamination in food, soil or water, but not humans.

The new kit will be commercially available in two years' time.

- CNA/xq

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Browsers: Top 5 events from 2012

For a while there, the browser was winning the war.

New startups launched online services rather than packaged software. Browser makers raced to transform the Web from a place to publish documents into a general-purpose programming platform. People spent more and more time using the Web instead of software that ran natively on devices.

Then the era of modern smartphones and
tablets began. And in 2012, it became clear that Web app advocates will have to work a lot harder to build a universal software foundation. Here's a look at what happened this year in the world of the Web, starting with an an extremely public vote of no confidence.

The W3C's new HTML5 logo stands for more than just the HTML5 standard.

(Credit:
W3C)

Facebook slaps down HTML5
The basic technology for describing Web pages is Hypertext Markup Language, and the new HTML5 version now symbolizes modern Web development, even though it also relies on other standards such as JavaScript for running actual programs and CSS for formatting and effects.

The HTML5 idea is that Web apps can span many devices -- Windows machines, Macs, smartphones, tablets, and more -- because everything has a browser these days. One of the biggest advocates of the approach was Facebook, which used Web coding to reach a tremendous range of devices.

But Facebook this year abruptly changed course, choosing instead to release native iOS and
Android apps. The company had loved the Web approach, which let its programmers constantly release new versions that would load the same way a browser loads a fresh version of a Web site. But the performance wasn't acceptable.

"I think the biggest mistake that we made as a company is betting too much on HTML5 as opposed to native," Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said. "Probably we will look back saying that is one of the biggest mistakes if not the biggest strategic mistake that we made."

Zuckerberg's long-term enthusiasm for Web apps was a pretty unappealing consolation prize.

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg called his company's reliance on Web apps for mobile access to the site a major strategic error.

(Credit:
James Martin/CNET)

Microsoft stiffs browser rivals
With
Windows 8, Microsoft is trying to make a fresh start with the operating system interfaces that software can use. Windows 8 marries the older Win32 interfaces with the new WinRT. But Windows RT, the cousin that runs on mobile devices such as Microsoft's Surface that use ARM processors, lets third-party software use only the WinRT interfaces.

That happens to hobble browsers -- well, third-party browsers like Chrome and Firefox. Microsoft's own IE10 gets access to the low-level Win32 interfaces, letting it run JavaScript faster. Mozilla objected strenuously, and Google piled on, too. Microsoft carved an exception for browsers running on Windows 8, no doubt encouraged by its earlier antitrust woes involving Internet Explorer, but the company doesn't look likely to budge on Windows RT.

Even though European officials are checking into the situation, legal experts think any opponents would have a hard antitrust case.

The result, though could be that browser choice becomes a thing of the past. Safari dominates on iOS, Android's browser on Android, and IE on Windows Phone. Even if people might want a choice, company limits often preclude it.

Do Not Track derailed
Microsoft also threw a wrench in the works of a proposed new standard called Do Not Track (DNT) that's designed to let people tell Web sites not to keep tabs on their online behavior. The effort grew out of a Federal Trade Commission request for the industry to come up with a voluntary solution to the issue, since privacy advocates are not happy with the idea of behavioral targeting of advertisements.

Mozilla proposed a solution that got traction in Chrome, Opera, and Safari, in which browsers would tell Web sites not to track if people had expressly set the browser to send the message. But Microsoft, saying it wanted more privacy, turns DNT on if people accept the Windows 8 default installation settings. That might sound great for privacy, but online advertisers say they'll ignore the setting if it hasn't been expressly set by users.

DNT author Roy Fielding, an Adobe scientist and programmer in the Apache Web server software project, one-upped Microsoft by patching Apache so it overrides IE's DNT setting. But Microsoft isn't budging.

What could break the DNT gridlock? Perhaps the appointment of Peter Swire as co-chair of the group trying to standardize it.

Microsoft's IE has stopped its market-share losses, with Chrome and Firefox jockeying for second place.

(Credit:
Data from Net Applications; chart by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

IE gets real
There's a big community of people who don't like Microsoft's browser actions -- squashing Netscape in the 1990s then letting IE6 lie fallow for years.

But that's old thinking. Microsoft dragged itself back aboard the Web standards bandwagon with IE9. But this year's release of IE10 -- packaged with Windows 8 and set to arrive in finished form later for Windows 7 -- that's the stronger statement.

IE10 supports a long list of new Web standards: IndexedDB and AppCache for writing Web apps that work even when a computer doesn't have a Net connection; support for a range of pointers including multitouch interfaces; asychronous script execution for getting Web pages to load faster and run more smoothly; the file interface for better uploads and ways for apps to access data; sandbox security restrictions; and a lot of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) effects.

And it's pretty fast to load Web pages. All this means IE10 can compete -- and not just because it's built into Windows. There are still some missing features -- the WebGL interface for 3D graphics, for instance, which Microsoft thinks is a security risk -- but even without it and some other omissions, Web programmers still can look forward to IE's transition to a modern browser.

Naturally, Microsoft is tooting its IE horn as a result. And it has a strong incentive to keep pushing ahead: Windows 8 apps can be written using the JavaScript, CSS, and HTML Web technologies. Microsoft might have a vanishingly small share of Web usage in the mobile market, but it has mostly stopped IE's share losses in PC browser usage.

The $249 Samsung Chromebook

(Credit:
Sarah Tew/CNET)

Price cut makes Chromebooks worthwhile
Chrome OS, Google's browser-based operating system, was a wacky idea when it debuted in 2009 and still not very compelling when it arrived in products called Chromebooks in 2011. But in 2012, Google and its Chrome OS allies came up with a much more compelling recipe by lowering the price.

First came the $249 Samsung Chromebook, which uses an ARM processor rather than a more conventional Intel chip. Next was the even cheaper Acer C7 Chromebook, which uses an Intel chip but drops the SSD in favor of a conventional hard drive.

Neither can come anywhere close to replacing a video-game rig or Photoshop workstation. But for the price, they can be a capable second or third machine to have around the house for e-mail, surfing, Facebook, and homework assignments. They may not have the entertainment appeal of a tablet packed with games, but they're cheaper than a new iPad, and a lot of people prefer a keyboard when it's time to type.

Samsung also released some higher-end Chromebooks and the first Chromebox, a small machine that requires an external monitor, keyboard, and mouse. They're more expensive, but in combination with the significantly revamped Chrome OS and integrated with Google Drive, they're useful for a certain population.

Web apps may be struggling on smartphones and tablets, but for a laptop, they're a more realistic option. Browser makers and Web developers have work to do on mobile, but they're hardly an endangered species.

Read More..

Pictures: Fungi Get Into the Holiday Spirit

Photograph courtesy Stephanie Mounaud, J. Craig Venter Institute

Mounaud combined different fungi to create a Santa hat and spell out a holiday message.

Different fungal grow at different rates, so Mounaud's artwork rarely lasts for long. There's only a short window of time when they actually look like what they're suppose to.

"You do have to keep that in perspective when you're making these creations," she said.

For example, the A. flavus fungi that she used to write this message from Santa grows very quickly. "The next day, after looking at this plate, it didn't say 'Ho Ho Ho.' It said 'blah blah blah,'" Mounaud said.

The message also eventually turned green, which was the color she was initially after. "It was a really nice green, which is what I was hoping for. But yellow will do," she said.

The hat was particularly challenging. The fungus used to create it "was troubling because at different temperatures it grows differently. The pigment in this one forms at room temperature but this type of growth needed higher temperatures," Mounaud said.

Not all fungus will grow nicely together. For example, in the hat, "N. fischeri [the brim and ball] did not want to play nice with the P. marneffei [red part of hat] ... so they remained slightly separated."

Published December 21, 2012

Read More..

Giant tooth hints at truly monumental dinosaur

They were the biggest animals ever to walk the Earth – now a new fossil suggests the largest sauropod dinosaurs were even bigger than we thought.

Sauropods were enormous plant-eating beasts with long necks and tails. The biggest are aptly named titanosaurs, and could reach 30 metres long and weigh 80 tonnes.

But some titanosaurs may have been even bigger than that, says Rodolfo García at the National University of Río Negro in Argentina. He has found a 7.5-centimetre-long titanosaur tooth at Salitral de Santa Rosa in Río Negro – that makes it 32 per cent longer than the previous record holder.

Did it belong to a titanosaur even bigger than any found so far? García says it is possible: the tooth probably came from an enormous skull, he says, which suggests a monumental body.

Philip Mannion of Imperial College London points out that we do not yet have good fossil skulls of the largest titanosaurs, so the tooth might simply belong to one of them. We'll need to find more of the dinosaur from which the tooth came to convince him that it was an even bigger beast.

If more evidence was found to suggest its existence, the next task would be to name it. Palaeontologists would need to go one better than Ultrasaurus, Supersaurus and Megalosaurus but Colossasaurus is still up for grabs.

Journal reference: Cretaceous Research, doi.org/j2w

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Nesting turtle numbers fall in South Asia: experts

KOLKATA: Conservationists have expressed alarm over the low number of turtles arriving on the coast of east India and Bangladesh for the nesting season, blaming overfishing and climate change for the decline.

Between November and March, several species of sea turtle, including the Olive Ridley, travel thousands of miles to nest on the sandy shores of Sundarbans, the world's largest mangrove forest.

"Just a few have so far been spotted. The long, wide beaches of the Bay of Bengal in the Sundarbans look empty," Pradip Vyas, director of the Indian government's Sundarbans Biosphere project, told AFP on Thursday.

"We are monitoring the six islands where sea turtles lay their eggs but we fear they are not coming in such numbers due to degradation of the sea, pollution and climate change."

Straddling Bangladesh and India, the 10,000 square kilometre (3,900 square mile) Sundarbans is famous for being the largest wildlife home for endangered Bengal tigers, but it is also a habitat for many rare marine species.

In Bangladesh, which is home to 60 per cent of the forest, wildlife experts said the number of turtles arriving on the pristine coastline dropped by at least 50 per cent in the past 10 years.

"It's a very grim picture," said S.M. Rashid, head of the Dhaka-based Centre for Advanced Research in Natural Resources and Management.

"In the 1990s we could spot 50-60 turtles nesting in our beaches in a night.

"But now the number has come down to a maximum 10," said Rashid, whose team in June successfully bred a critically endangered turtle using an artificial beach habitat.

Environmentalists blame a spike in fishing and climate change causing sea levels to rise and more cyclones for the alarming drop in turtle population, and they say that humans stealing eggs is another major problem.

"Overfishing has emerged as a threat to sea turtles coming to beaches of the Sundarbans," said Subrata Mukherjee, India's senior Sundarbans official, adding up to 1,500 boats now catch fish along the coast.

"A large number of sea turtles die after they are caught in fishing nets."

In the last five years, the Sundarbans were hit by two devastating cyclones, killing more than 5,000 people living in the villages along the forest.

"The nesting grounds of the marine turtle are being destroyed due to erosion and deposition of fresh sands. This is happening largely because of climate change," said Anurag Danda, an Indian WWF wildlife expert.

"Sea turtles are also avoiding the Sundarbans because of fierce winds during cyclones."

- AFP/il

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Hulu chief asks bosses for $200 million in funding -- report

Hulu CEO Jason Kilar has asked his corporate overlords for twice as much cash as last year to fund the company's growth strategy, a new report claims.

Kilar has petitioned Hulu owners Walt Disney, Comcast, and News Corp. for $200 million for 2013 to be used for acquiring more programming and expanding the company's reach around the world, the Wall Street Journal is reporting today, citing people who claim to have knowledge of the talks. Last year, Kilar asked for about half of that figure.

According to the Journal's sources, a decision hasn't been made yet by the companies. However, the sources say that News Corp., which owns Fox, would like to see Hulu transition away from ads and become a subscription-only service. Disney prefers a free service supported by ads. Comcast, which now owns NBC Universal, is not allowed to vote because of regulatory guidelines placed upon it related to its NBC acquisition.

Earlier this week, Kilar touted his company's growth, saying that it will close 2012 with approximately $695 million in revenue -- up 65 percent compared to 2011. However, it's believed that Hulu is still losing money, making the decision to drop a significant amount of cash into the company a bit more difficult.

Still, Hulu had a strong 2012. The company delivered its service to several more devices, including the
Wii U and
Apple TV, and more than doubled the number of subscribers to its $8-a-month service.

Despite that growth, having ample cash continues to be the thorn in Hulu's side. In October, the company had to borrow $338 million to let early investor Providence Equity Partners out of the company.

As Hulu's investors determine their next move, persistent rumors have suggested they might decide to sell off the company instead. So far, none of the companies have confirmed Hulu is being shopped, but every so often, new rumors crop up that discussions are being held. There has also been talk of Kilar leaving Hulu.

In other words, there seems to be a lot that's up in the air at Hulu right now.

CNET has contacted Hulu for comment on the Journal's report. We will update this story when we have more information.

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Winter Solstice 2012: Facts on the Shortest Day of the Year

Today is the winter solstice and the first day of winter in the Northern Hemisphere. It's all due to Earth's tilt, which ensures that the shortest day of every year falls around December 21.

Some predicted that today would also mark Earth's doomsday, thanks to a longstanding rumor that the Maya calendar ends on December 21, 2012. But earlier this year, National Geographic grantee William Saturno found evidence that the Maya calculated dates thousands of years past 2012.

"We keep looking for endings," Saturno said in a statement. "The Maya were looking for a guarantee that nothing would change. It's an entirely different mindset."

(Read more about the Maya apocalypse myth.)

Even without an apocalypse, the solstice has been an auspicious day since ancient times. Countless cultural and religious traditions mark the winter solstice; it's no coincidence that so many holidays surround the first day of winter.

Solstice in Space: Astronomy of the First Day of Winter

During the winter solstice the sun hugs closer to the horizon than at any other time during the year, yielding the least amount of daylight annually. On the bright side, the day after the winter solstice marks the beginning of lengthening days leading up to the summer solstice.

"Solstice" is derived from the Latin phrase for "sun stands still." That's because—after months of growing shorter and lower since the summer solstice—the sun's arc through the sky appears to stabilize, with the sun seeming to rise and set in the same two places for several days. Then the arc begins growing longer and higher in the sky, reaching its peak at the summer solstice.

(Related sun pictures: See a full year in a single frame.)

The solstices occur twice a year (around December 21 and June 21) because Earth is tilted by an average of 23.5 degrees as it orbits the sun—the same phenomenon that drives the seasons.

During the warmer half of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, the North Pole is tilted toward the sun. The northern winter solstice occurs when the "top" half of Earth is tilted away from the sun at its most extreme angle of the year.

Being the shortest day of the year, the winter solstice is essentially the year's darkest day, but it's not the coldest. Because the oceans are slow to heat and cool, in December the seas still retain some warmth from summer, delaying the coldest of winter days for another month and a half. Similarly, summer doesn't hit its heat peak until August, a month or two after the summer solstice.

Winter Solstice Marked Since Ancient Times

Throughout history, humans have celebrated the winter solstice, often with an appreciative eye toward the return of summer sunlight.

Massive prehistoric monuments such as Ireland's mysterious Newgrange tomb (video) are aligned to capture the light at the moment of the winter solstice sunrise.

Germanic peoples of Northern Europe honored the winter solstice with Yule festivals—the origin of the still-standing tradition of the long-burning Yule log.

The Roman feast of Saturnalia, honoring the God Saturn, was a weeklong December feast that included the observance of the winter solstice. Romans also celebrated the lengthening of days following the solstice by paying homage to Mithra, an ancient Persian god of light.

Many modern pagans attempt to observe the winter solstice in the traditional manner of the ancients.

"There is a resurgent interest in more traditional religious groups that is often driven by ecological motives," said Harry Yeide, a professor of religion at George Washington University. "These people do celebrate the solstice itself."

(Related: Get Stonehenge facts and pictures in National Geographic magazine.)

Pagans aren't alone in commemorating the winter solstice in modern times.

In a number of U.S. cities a Watertown, Massachusetts-based production called The Christmas Revels honors the winter solstice with an annually changing lineup of traditional music and dance from around the world.

"Nearly every northern culture has some sort of individual way of celebrating that shortest day," said Revels artistic director Patrick Swanson. "It's a lot of fun for us to dig up the traditional dance and music and even the plays [honoring] that time of the year."

Of course, as the name suggests, The Christmas Revels mix ancient winter solstice traditions with customs of the holiday that largely replaced winter solstice celebrations across much of the Northern Hemisphere: Christmas.

Winter Solstice's Christmas Connection

Scholars aren't exactly sure of the date of Jesus Christ's birthday, the first Christmas.

"In the early years of the Christian church, the calendar was centered around Easter," George Washington University's Yeide said. "Nobody knows exactly where and when they began to think it suitable to celebrate Christ's birth as well as the Passion cycle"—the Crucifixion and resurrection depicted in the Bible. (Related: "Christmas Star Mystery Continues.")

Eastern churches traditionally celebrate Christmas on January 6, a date known as Epiphany in the West. The winter date may have originally been chosen on the basis that Christ's conception and Crucifixion would have fallen during the same season—and a spring conception would have resulted in a winter birth.

But Christmas soon became commingled with traditional observances of the first day of winter.

"As the Christmas celebration moved west," Yeide said "the date that had traditionally been used to celebrate the winter solstice became sort of available for conversion to the observance of Christmas. In the Western church the December date became the date for Christmas."

Early church leaders endeavored to attract pagans to Christianity by adding Christian meaning to existing winter solstice festivals.

"This gave rise to an interesting play on words," Yeide said. "In several languages, not just in English, people have traditionally compared the rebirth of the sun with the birth of the son of God."

Read More..