If you live in northern Europe and ride a bike for the pleasure of it, you’ll have noticed that we have Christmas at a very stupid time of year. We could have had it any time, really, since it’s not literally on the date that Christ was born, it’s just an open-mould knock-off of a pagan midwinter festival.
We could have had it Christmas special. Failing that, we could at least have had it when the weather wasn’t subzero, and when the roads were dry enough that you could take your new Christmas kit out for a spin without having to spend the King’s speech washing it. The UCI used to arbitrarily run the Track Worlds in February just to annoy bike riders by making them go training in the snow, and essentially the Christian churches are up to something similar.
