Here's a bunch of late, online shopping ideas for the anti-Christmas crowd

IF YOU ARE a bit religious then please skip this article, as we don't want to offend anyone. On the other hand there are the agnostics amongst us who do not celebrate Christmas. So does it mean we can't have a celebration buying presents online for us or others? Hardly.

Calling itself "The Nation’s Only Anti-Christmas Gift Shop", the web site of the UK's National Secular Society offers politically correct "non-Christmas" gifts like, for instance, greeting cards with pictures of New York selected from the city's Metropolitan Museum of Art. These cards are described as "beautifully produced and have greetings such as “Celebrate the Season” – and not a Madonna, Angel, Wise Man or shepherd in sight." The NSS has also its own book dubbed "Our Pagan Christmas".

However, if you have a more militant atheist position, you won't be disappointed either, as there are coffee mugs and clothing with atheist slogans which are likely to "upset the vicar", as the site claims. So here's your chance to give the gift of a T-Shirt that reads "Religions are the problem not the solution" and the like. The site also offers select movies in DVD format like Inherit the Wind about creationism vs Darwin, The God Who Wasn’t There a documentary that aims to prove that there was no historical Jesus, and The Crucible about "mad religious hysteria" and Saved!, described as "an hilarious send-up of America’s Bible belt."

The products available from Blighty's National Secular Society web site are shipped to residents of the UK, Channel Islands and Isle of Man only. If you are across the pond in North America, you can also try the Apoplectic Press shop at the Cafepress web site.

The Apoplectic Press e-commerce site is full of badges, T-Shirts, greeting cards and other memorabilia with an agnostic, atheist, or generally anti-religious message. They have a special on very funny greeting cards for web orders placed until Dec the 31th, where you buy six cards and get one free.

Back to Blighty, you're still in time to buy some funny greeting cards from the Dean Morris Cards web site to put in the mail on the 31th -after smearing the postmark of course-. At £1.75 a piece, it includes collections like "Bollocks to Christmas" and "Smile it's Christmas". The Dean Morris cards are also available through distributors in the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, Germany and the Netherlands. Check its Contact Page.

Please do not complain about the timing of this article. Yes, it's a bit late to order Anti-Christmas presents. But if you don't believe in Christmas to begin with, who's paying attention to dates? Of course, this is only good for people with a sense of humour, we at the INQUIRER respect all credos, as we have plenty different specimens aboard our ship. This scribbler thinks we're "the Noah's Ark " of the IT journalism world. So whatever you do celebrate, or don't celebrate, have a good one. µ

L'INQs
Apoplectic Press
" Anti-Christmas Shop" at Secularism.org.uk
Dean Morris Cards
Humour: memo to the v ast anti-Christmas conspiracy