Just before last New Moon I ran into my neighbor.

“Hey, Ramadan coming up,” I said. “Are you looking forward?

She frowned.

“Too much work,” she said.

Ramadan, ugh. It's as bad as Christmas.

Like Christmas, Ramadan is an old pagan holiday dressed up in motho clothing. (In this case, a hijâb.) This year it's almost back to where it started in the first place: the moon of the Summer Solstice. A fast every day, a party every night: sounds pagan to me.

Ramadan is a hot item these days. True, there are lots more Muslims in my neighborhood now than there were a few years back. But it's not just demographic. Since 9/11, Ramadan actually makes national news. (Before that, of course, although a quarter of Earth's population—including millions of Americans—were observing the holiest time of their religious calendar, somehow the American media never found this a newsworthy event.) But in these days of unthinking Leftist Islamophilia, non-Muslims fast “in solidarity.” (A friend's husband calls this “religious tourism.”) The yards of the terminally liberal sprout Blessed Ramadan to Our Muslim Neighbors yard-signs.

Well, kumbaya to you, too.

(In my favorite scene from the movie Elvira, Queen of Darkness, Elvira, accused of witchcraft—she mistook her late aunt's Book of Shadows for a cookbook—is being burned at the stake, while the good citizens of Falwell, Massachusetts stand in a ring around the pyre, holding hands and singing: Someone's burning, Lord, kumbaya....)

I laugh when I hear descriptions on the radio of how “spiritual” and “close to 'God'” people feel during Ramadan. More holiday hype of the Christmas variety.

My own experience of Ramadan (from the outside) is that people get short-tempered and nasty. That's what fasting does to you.

And did I mention the long lines at stores? If you want to shop, you'd better do it off-peak.

Oh, I still wish my neighbor Ramadán mubárak when I see her, just as I wish Penny next door Happy Christmas at her special time of year.

But on the whole, what I'm really thinking is: A plague on both your houses.

Christmas? Ramadan?

Bah humbug.