To make a long story short: I was browsing a well-thumbed copy of the Book of Common Prayer (1928 ed.) when I discovered tucked into its pages a secret codex titled Schedule of Events. It took a while to decode this — I had to wait until exactly 6:00 p.m. and then expose the parchment to the vapors of dry vermouth — but I can now reveal that Anglican (and hence, World) History will end precisely at ... but maybe I'm getting ahead of myself.

It’s hard to remember sometimes that Christmas is a religious holiday — not just a school vacation, mandatory shopping season, and reliable catalyst of family conflict. If it weren’t for the occasional old-time carol slipping in between chestnuts and reindeer on the December playlist, one might reasonably wonder what this all has to do with a tiny slumbering deity in some backwater town in Galilee.

It’s hard to be a Luddite nowadays. Technology is all-pervasive; many of us schlep around with pocket-sized devices on which we could, in theory, paint a masterpiece or shoot and edit a high-def movie, complete with soundtrack. Bangor developer Jesse Grosjean has even created an app to turn your iPhone into a circa-1980 word processing terminal.

My Zeitgeist monitor must be on the fritz: the needle has been trending up toward "Cheerio" even as temperatures fall into single digits, along with the hours of daylight. I find myself staring in bemusement at these smiling faces around me. Can it be that all these folks actually like winter?

Being a thoroughly modern American as well as a responsible journalist, I decided to take a poll.

        

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We don't call it commuting. But most working Mainers, like people everywhere else, have to head out early each morning for the trip to the office or the school or the job site. Maine being what it is, these daily treks can be pretty colorful, down winding country roads or through snow-filled hollows or across icy watercourses. Still, it's just the drive to work. You get used to it.