I woke up this morning and the first thing I felt was, well, … surprise.

Like millions of others I had gone to bed last night fully expecting to awaken to no world at all.

In fact I had not expected to wake up at all. After all when the world ends, it ends right? And we end with it, don’t we?

I should have had some clue that the world would continue after today. There is a store in the building where my office is located that imports all of its wares from Mexico and the store management had posted a large sign outside the store yesterday that read, “Mayan calendars 50% off.”

I must confess that I am finding these constant predictions of the world ending to be a bit tiresome.

You do remember Harold Camping don’t you? He’s the preacher from California who predicted the world would end in the spring of 2011 and when that didn’t happen he admitted that he had miscalculated and reset the date for later that year.

Sadly for him the world continued beyond that date too leaving his followers scratching their heads while he was furiously recalibrating his abacus.

It seems that every so often a new religious leader offers up an expiry date for the planet and I personally am finding all the preparation required for these events to be exhausting.

I mean, it’s not easy to prepare yourself for nothingness. As the date draws closer there are constant and pressing decisions to be made. How much dog food to buy? Do we stock up on batteries? Do we stay up and stare out the window so as to watch the end of everything or do we go to bed and let nothingness overcome us in our sleep?

So when I woke up this morning and realized that I had woken up this morning I decided that in the future I will never again take these predictions seriously.

I mean, after all, when we hear people “cry wolf” enough times we stop believing that there may be wolves present, don’t we?

So realizing I was probably going to be around for a while yet I turned my attention to other events that had taken place this week.

You may have read about the man in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan who demanded that the city remove the words “Merry Christmas” from all public transit vehicles as Canada is not a Christian country and he was outraged that religious holidays are being celebrated at taxpayer expense.

Exercising great common sense the Saskatoon City Council told him to pound sand. Apparently he was not satisfied with their decision and has filed a complaint with the Human Rights Commission demanding that those noxious words be removed from all public transit right across Canada.

He feels his human rights are being impinged upon you and he is being forced to become part of something he does not believe in.

It seems that every year around this time somebody complains about his or her rights being trampled on as millions of Canadians celebrate Christmas

Do you think if we just ignore these people they would go away?

Canada, not only being the greatest country in the world in which to live, is a Christian country and Christmas is a wonderful time of the year that is celebrated and enjoyed by millions from coast to coast.

I am not a Christian and I’ve lived in two countries both of which celebrate Christmas in great style and I have come to look forward to this time of year as a time of great friendship and as a time when people seem just a little bit friendlier than they do the rest of the year.

My understanding is that this man, like me, is an immigrant to this country. I would like to point out to him that he is not in this country because he appeared before a judge who sentenced him to live here.

He is here because he chose to be here and when a country opens its arms to us and allows us to live as citizens within its borders it is incumbent upon us to integrate and embrace the culture and patterns of that country, not to try and reshape that country into our belief systems.

Life is about choices – we have spent much time discussing that in these pages – and if this man’s choice in moving to a country that celebrates Christmas is causing him pain then I would like to suggest to him that hemake yet another choice and return to wherever he came from.

I realize it is not politically correct to suggest to immigrants that if they don’t like what they find here they are free to leave, but it is an absolute fact – they are free to leave whenever they choose.

As for Christmas? I love it and at the risk of offending this poor downtrodden individual even further I would like to wish all of you a MERRY CHRISTMAS.

Till we read again.

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