Having got the Grinch and Cromwellian gloom of Christmases past out of the way last Sunday, and with the great celebration now only five days away, let's share some traditional happiness on the festival that wouldn't die.

We won't get into an argument here -- or even a friendly discussion -- on the date the baby who eventually gave his name to Christmas was born. It doesn't really matter. Over centuries, it has become accepted practice to celebrate on Dec. 25, and I think that's OK by most Christians, even as we acknowledge the date was chosen by religious leaders attempting to wean new converts from established pagan winter-solstice festivals.

Re-programming the winter bacchanalia was only a partial success. Over-indulgence in food and drink were supposed to be replaced by more serious Christian virtues, but not much has changed as millenniums rolled by. Feasting and revelry still edge out worship and thankfulness in the 21st-century pagan-Christian Christmas mix.

But it's not all bad.

Traditional legend has it that, back in the 1300s, an Oxford scholar, walking through the forest to attend midnight mass, was confronted by a wild boar in attack mode. When the animal charged, jaws agape, the scholar, armed only with a metal-bound book of Aristotle's philosophies, jammed the book down the boar's throat and choked it. Later that night, presumably after mass, the boar's head was cooked, garnished with fine herbs and carried into a banquet hall as a choir sang "in honour of the King of Bliss."

The Bodleian Library at Oxford University still holds a single leaf from a copy of Christmasse Carolies printed by Wynkin de Worde in 1521. Historians figure that was close to 200 years after the Boar's Head Carol was first sung in 1350. It is still sung annually at Oxford and at Christmas functions throughout the world, including Victoria.

The words are typical of the strange mix of worship and wassailing -- a wassail being a spiced ale to help Boar's Head carolers sing "the boar's head in hand I bring bedecked with bays and rosemary, I pray you, my masters, be merry and sing Quo estis in convivio (all who are feasting together)." The carol insists the boar's head requires "servite cum in cantico" [serve it while singing] in honour of the King of Bliss."

It wasn't long before the common folk were joining the Boar's Head elite with "let's dance and sing, and make good cheer, for Christmas comes but once a year," a couplet as well used today as when it was coined centuries ago.

On the more solemn and magical side of Christmas is Shakespeare's Marcellus telling Horatio and Bernardo after they have seen the ghost in Hamlet: "Some say that ever 'gainst this season comes Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated, This bird of dawning singeth all night long; And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad, The nights are wholesome, then no planet strike, No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm, So hallow'd and so gracious is the time."

In 1616, Ben Jonson gave us the still famous Masque of Christmas as it was played for the Court of King James I. Not as spooky as Hamlet's, it was described as "entering into all the gayety of that merry season" with "roast beef, plum pudding, wassail and other old worthies brought out to add to the merriment of the season." It is the version of Christmas most of us prefer to follow 400 years later.

Robert Herrick, clergyman, poet and Jonson admirer, while deeply thankful for the joys of Christmas, always remembered to say thank you:

" 'Tis thou that crown'st my glittering hearth With guiltless mirth; And giv'st me wassail-bowls to drink; Spiced to the brink."

It won't hurt if, close to four centuries later, we follow his example and take a break from celebrating to acknowledge how fortunate we are. Just a quick thank-you to mothers, wives, friends or whichever God you may believe in -- or just to good fortune if there isn't a God, mother, wife or friend in sight. And then, as Vicar Herrick, wrote:

"Come bring with a noise, My merry, merry boys

The Christmas log to the fireing

Drink now the strong beer

Cut the white loaf here

The while the meat is a shredding,

For the rare mince pie

And the plums stand by

To fill the paste that's a-kneading."

I'm off now to celebrate in my own way with a wish to readers for the happiest of times, and a "thank-you" to you all for another year of encouragement and support. If the universe continues to unfold as I have it planned, I'll be back Jan. 10.

(My thanks to Google for my expertise in Latin, and to a Dec. 14, 1901, issue of the New York Times for the Boar's Head story.)