“What do you want for Christmas?” On the surface, an innocent question. But not easy to answer.

Recently I’ve taken up the flag for a battle which I cannot hope to win, a flag which makes this question particularly bothersome.

I’m putting more of a conscious effort into not lusting after things I wouldn’t find myself wanting if I didn’t know they existed. This includes everything from clever bumper stickers and novelty desk ornaments to clothes and computer accessories.

Which explains why this is a difficult season for me. Here I am, minding my own business, hopelessly trying to shed myself of the materialistic garb which has covered my American body since birth, while everyone I know petitions me for a list of stuff I want.

Even when I succumb to my trivial desires and surrender answers like “more blank minidiscs,” I can’t help but wonder what Thanksgiving turkey contains that turns us into holiday-shopping zombies for a solid month.

What really irks me is the phrase “for Christmas.” I don’t want things for Christmas. Christmas is not an entity to whom gifts can be given or wished upon. Ask me, “What do you want for the women’s basketball team?” and I can give you an answer: a Big 12 Championship and over 12,000 fans at a home game. But for Christmas? Doesn’t make sense.

Items on our wish lists are things we want for ourselves, not “for Christmas.” We want them whether it’s Christmas or not.

Our desire to receive gifts over the holiday and give them as a sort of mass-produced token of our appreciation for others has nothing to do with Christ and everything to do with ourselves.

Others may argue with such an assertion, lending emphasis to the spirit of giving, rather than the receiving. If people were giving to destitute children in third world countries, I would gladly surrender the point. Unfortunately, a comparison of holiday retail receipts to charitable giving suggests most cash is flowing from middle-class Americans to other middle-class Americans, not to the poor.

Christmas has taken criticism (if one can criticize a holiday) for having transformed from a religious celebration of the birth of Christ into a pagan festival of ritualistic consumption, and there’s merit in such an evaluation.

Alarmists fear this trend is somehow threatening all we hold dear to our hearts, whatever that might be. But really, we’re just returning to our Roman roots.

History is no stranger to cyclical patterns, and we’re just coming around full circle; revisiting the holiday spirit which permeated midwinter celebration of a bygone era.

After all, the relation of December 25 to the birth of Christ is dubious at best. Christmas’ roots lie not in the annual observance of the end of Mary’s teenage pregnancy but in the Roman festival Saturnalia.

Early Christians weren’t big into holidays. This had little to do with a shortage of wrapping paper in the pre-industrial Mediterranean and much to do with the constant threat of persecution with which the first adherents dealt.

It was also rather worldly and blatantly pagan to celebrate any sort of birthday at that point.

Attitudes slowly changed, however, and following Constantine’s edict of Milan, which brought an end to years of legal persecution of Christians, the early worshippers were at liberty to observe Christ’s birthday.

The actual date of Christ’s birth having been lost, early Christians were forced to more or less just pick a day, and December 25 made some good sense at the time.

December 25 was “natalis Solis Invictus,” (the birthday of the unconquered son), which had been created by Roman emperor and noted pagan Aurelian, a Mithra-worshipper, in 274 AD.

The 25th fell in the midst of Saturnalia, a wild, merry Roman festival which had existed for ages and makes our modern Christmas sound like a visit to the dentist. Gambling was legal during the festival.

Government functions like the legal system were shut down, school was canceled, slaves could actually speak their minds, and there was a tremendous amount of gift-giving.

There was a goodly amount of tension between those who paid homage to Mithra and the Christians around the time of edict.

To soothe this tension, early Christians thought it might be a good idea to placate Mithra’s devotees by creating something in which they could both partake. Hence, it was decided Christmas should be celebrated on the same day as the major Mithra-centric holiday.

While such a description of the roots of Christmas provides an ample helping of oversimplification, the pagan roots of the holiday and a vast number of pagan traditions surrounding it persist.

Given our recent collective migration from the churches to the malls, it’s comforting to know many of the traditions from which we are now straying weren’t particularly Christian in the first place.

One other thing: As per my mention earlier of what I want for the women’s basketball team, I hereby declare that I will SHAVE MY HEAD if over 12,000 people show up for a regular-season home game.

Merry Saturnalia!

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Ben Byrne is a senior in graphic design from Edina, Minn. Ya sure, you betcha!