(n.) An annual church festival (December 25) and in some States a legal holiday, in memory of the birth of Christ, often celebrated by a particular church service, and also by special gifts, greetings, and hospitality.
Example Sentences:
(1) In the bars of Antwerp and the cafes of Bruges, the talk is less of Christmas markets and hot chocolate than of the rising cost of financing a national debt which stands at 100% of annual national income.
(2) Would people feel differently about it if, for instance, it happened on Boxing Day or Christmas Eve?
(3) Having been knocked out of the League Cup and Cup Winners' Cup before Christmas, they lost an FA Cup fourth-round replay at West Brom on 1 February.
(4) The pressure is ramping up on Asda boss Andy Clarke, who next week will reveal the chain’s sales performance for the quarter covering Christmas.
(5) Just before Christmas the independent Kerslake report severely criticised Birmingham city council for its dysfunctional politics and, in particular, its handling of the so-called Trojan Horse affair, in which school governors were said to have set out to bring about an Islamic agenda into the curriculum contents and the day-to-day running of some schools.
(6) Other Christmas favourites, including stollen, organic mince pies and Schweppes tonic will also be included among 100 seasonal products on the list of 1,000 items which shoppers can choose from over the next few months.
(7) Following its success, Littleloud created a version of the game for Apple's iPad, launched onto the App Store at Christmas.
(8) The "Dream Toys" for Christmas list includes a few old favourites alongside some new, and sparkly, additions.
(9) It is deeply moving hearing him talk now – as if from the grave – about a Christmas Day when he felt so frustrated and cut-off from his family that he had to go into the office to escape.
(10) As well as stocking second-hand items for purchase, charity shops such as Oxfam have launched Christmas gifts to provide specific help for poor communities abroad.
(11) On the 18th I will be sitting down to the university Christmas meal two hours after the results are passed on to me.
(12) Senior executives at Network Rail are likely to be summoned to Westminster to explain the engineering overruns that caused chaos for Christmas travellers over the weekend.
(13) I tried desperately hard not to influence her, but I did steer her away from a baby that I've already bought her for her Christmas present.
(14) Perhaps it’s the lot of people like my colleagues here in the centre and me to wrestle with our consciences, shed tears, lose sleep and try to make the best of a very bad, heart-breaking job and leave the rest of the world to party, get pissed and celebrate Christmas.
(15) Matt Busby used to say to us that if we were six points off the lead at Christmas we would win the league.
(16) When the owners of Manchester City finally managed to persuade Pep Guardiola to oversee the next stage of their masterplan it is fair to say they probably did not expect to be approaching Christmas scuffling with a team of Watford’s limitations for their first league win at home in almost three months.
(17) It should see the Arctic 30 home in time for Christmas.
(18) The Christmas theme doesn't end there; "America's Christmas Hometown" also has Santa's Candy Castle, a red-brick building with turrets that was built by the Curtiss Candy Company in the 1930s and sells gourmet candy canes in abundance.
(19) Justice League, a followup to Dawn of Justice featuring Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman, arrives in May 2017, with a film starring Flash and the Green Lantern debuting the following Christmas.
(20) The TV campaign, created by ad agency Leo Burnett, uses imagery and motifs more closely associated with Christmas than summer.
Secular
Definition:
(a.) Coming or observed once in an age or a century.
(a.) Pertaining to an age, or the progress of ages, or to a long period of time; accomplished in a long progress of time; as, secular inequality; the secular refrigeration of the globe.
(a.) Of or pertaining to this present world, or to things not spiritual or holy; relating to temporal as distinguished from eternal interests; not immediately or primarily respecting the soul, but the body; worldly.
(a.) Not regular; not bound by monastic vows or rules; not confined to a monastery, or subject to the rules of a religious community; as, a secular priest.
(a.) Belonging to the laity; lay; not clerical.
(n.) A secular ecclesiastic, or one not bound by monastic rules.
(n.) A church official whose functions are confined to the vocal department of the choir.
(n.) A layman, as distinguished from a clergyman.
Example Sentences:
(1) Broad-based secular comprehensives that draw in families across the class, faith and ethnic spectrum, entirely free of private control, could hold a new appeal.
(2) In women, the secular increase occurred throughout the distribution of body weights but the change in the upper end was two to three times greater than that in the other parts of the distribution.
(3) Secularism is the only way to stop collapse and chaos and to foster bonds of citizenship in our complex democracy.
(4) These secular changes may explain why some studies have found that oral contraceptives have a protective effect, while others have been unable to show such an effect.
(5) Secular growth changes of Stockholm schoolchildren born in 1933, 1943, 1953 and 1963 were studied through samples of about 2500 children in each year.
(6) We still have at our disposal the rational interpretive skills that are the legacy of humanistic education, not as a sentimental piety enjoining us to return to traditional values or the classics but as the active practice of worldly secular rational discourse.
(7) Archbishop Eliud Wabukala of Kenya said the “truth [of the Gospel] continues to be called into question in the Anglican communion” and warned against “the global ambitions of a secular culture”.
(8) The previous history of PID, especially in the older age groups, reflects the combined effect of secular trends in PID incidence and temporal changes in diagnostic and treatment practices.
(9) 'If you meet, you drink …' Thus introduced to intoxicating liquors under auspices both secular and sacred, the offering of alms for oblivion I took to be the custom of the country in which I had been born.
(10) Memories of the conflict – in which up to 3 million people may have died – remain very much alive in the country of 160 million, the world's third largest Muslim state, albeit one with a broadly secular political culture.
(11) Causes of the marked secular trends in the cancer mortality and incidence are not clear, but the major causes are suspected to be changes in dietary habits, smoking and drinking habits, and other socio-environmental factors such as marital and reproductive factors.
(12) The results indicate an end to the positive secular trend for height and weight at about the same time as the previously reported end to a decreasing age of menarch in London girls.
(13) Ahead of disputed parliamentary elections, the secular forces that featured so prominently during the first months of the revolution are struggling.
(14) This secular trend was due to both "laboratory drift" and increasing use of diuretics.
(15) Thus, effects of secular change in age at menarche may not be wholly benign.
(16) A broad coalition of Egyptian organisations – some Islamist, some secular – plan to join with British NGOs and trade unions in protest at Sisi’s arrival ; letters denouncing Cameron’s invitation have been issued by political figures and academics , and an early-day motion in parliament condemning the visit has been signed by 51 MPs, including Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
(17) Their differences highlight Northern Ireland’s often stark dichotomy between religious-based social conservatism and secular progressive liberalism.
(18) It follows that the explanation of the secular trend as being an ecosensitive response of individuals to changing levels of well-being is insufficient.
(19) Hitchens responded to counter-examples of secular tyranny in the Soviet Union and China by saying: It is interesting to find that people of faith now seek defensively to say that they are no worse than fascists or Nazis or Stalinists.
(20) In conclusion it is suggested that medicalization may be conductive to sect development, and that secularization and medicalization are compatible models of social change.