title: Grant Shapps

text: In May 2008, Shapps was cited as one of several shadow ministers who had received cash from firms linked to their portfolios. The donors were originally recruited by Michael Gove who previously held the shadow housing portfolio. The Conservative Party said shadow ministers had not been influenced by donations. "Some Conservative policy on housing is actually against the policy of the donors", said a Conservative spokesman. Shadow ministers are allowed to receive donations from organisations covered by their brief as long as the person has a company in the UK or lives in the UK. The Commissioner exonerated all Shadow Cabinet members involved.


title: Grant Shapps

text: In April 2009, Shapps launched the Conservative Party's ninth green paper on policy, "Strong Foundations". In early 2010 Shapps published a series of six speeches in a pamphlet called "Home Truths".


title: Grant Shapps

text: In May 2010, Shapps became Minister of State for Housing and Local Government within the Communities and Local Government department and immediately repealed Home Information Pack (HIP) legislation. He chaired the Cross-Ministerial Working Group on Homelessness which includes ministers from eight Government departments. The group introduced 'No Second Night Out', a policy designed to prevent rough sleeping nationwide.


title: Grant Shapps

text: As Minister of State for Housing, Shapps promoted plans for flexible rent and controversially ended automatic lifetime social tenancies. He also introduced the New Homes Bonus which rewarded councils for building more homes. He denied claims that changes in Housing Benefit rules would be unfair claiming that ordinary people could no longer afford some of the homes paid for by the £24bn Housing Benefit bill. Shapps championed Tenant Panels.


title: Grant Shapps

text: At the 2011 party conference, Shapps backed the expansion of right to buy with the income being spent on replacing the sold housing with new affordable housing on a one for one basis.


title: Grant Shapps

text: In 2012, Shapps launched StreetLink – a website and phone app for the public to bring help to rough sleepers.


title: Grant Shapps

text: In September 2012, Shapps was appointed Co-Chairman of the Conservative Party in Cameron's first major reshuffle. His salary was paid by the party. That November, Shapps hired political strategist Lynton Crosby to provide strategic advice and run the 2015 election campaign.


title: Grant Shapps

text: In March 2013, Shapps defended the Welfare Reform Act 2012 (often referred to as the "Bedroom Tax") saying his own children share a bedroom. That September, Shapps complained to the Secretary-General of the United Nations about a press release issued in its name stating that the reforms went against human rights. Also in 2013, Shapps speaking on benefit reforms including capping benefits so that no out-of-work household can claim more than the average working family earns said that "nearly a million people have come off incapacity benefit... before going for the test. They've taken themselves off. My big argument here is this is not these people were trying to play the system, as much as these people were forced into a system that played them." His statement was criticised by Andrew Dilnot, Chairman of the UK Statistics Authority, who said that the figure for those previously on incapacity and withdrawing was just 19,700. The other 878,300 not on benefits consisted of a drop in new claimants of the ESA.


title: Grant Shapps

text: In October 2013, Shapps told "The Daily Telegraph" that the BBC could forfeit the right to its licence fee if it did not resolve its "culture of waste and secrecy". He also suggested that the organisation was biased against the Conservative Party, saying it did not "apply fairness in both directions" and that there was a "question of credibility for the organisation". His comments sparked a vigorous response from a former BBC Director General Greg Dyke who said that "politicians shouldn't define partiality". Others, including the then BBC Director General Tony Hall echoed some of Shapps's comments by saying that the "BBC needs to start treating public money as its own".


title: Grant Shapps

text: In March 2014, Shapps tweeted support of the 2014 budget as supporting ordinary people. Opponents criticised Shapps of being patronising to working people by believing their pastimes were limited to bingo and beer, and it drew critical media coverage in "The Guardian".


title: Grant Shapps

text: In 2012, "The Guardian" reported that Shapps's English Wikipedia article had been edited from his office to remove embarrassing information and correct an error. Shapps stated that he edited to make it more accurate.


title: Grant Shapps

text: During the 2015 general election campaign, "The Guardian" reported allegations by a Wikipedia administrator that Shapps had used a sockpuppet account, Contribsx, to remove embarrassing material from his own English Wikipedia page and make "largely unflattering" edits to articles about other politicians, including some in his own party. Shapps denied the allegations; the "Telegraph" claimed his accuser was a "Liberal Democrat activist". English Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee found there was "no significant evidence" to link the Contribsx account to Shapps. The elected committee censured the administrator responsible for the allegation; for causing the investigation; for making false allegations to "The Guardian"; and for blocking the Contribsx account. Another administrator removed the block placed on the account.


title: Grant Shapps

text: On 11 May 2015, Shapps was sacked from the Cabinet, which he had attended as Conservative Party co-chairman and Minister without portfolio at the Cabinet Office, and appointed as Minister of State at the Department for International Development. BBC political correspondent Chris Mason said the change appeared to be a demotion, while "The Guardian"s chief political correspondent, Nicholas Watt, went further, calling it "a humiliating blow".


title: Grant Shapps

text: On 28 November 2015, Shapps stood down as minister of state due to allegations of bullying within the Conservative Party. It has been claimed that Shapps, in his previous role as party co-chairman, had ignored repeated allegations of bullying involving Mark Clarke, the then party youth organiser. Baroness Warsi, Shapps's predecessor as co-chair of the Conservative Party, had written to Shapps to raise concerns about Clarke's conduct in January 2015. Shapps had appointed Clarke to head his party's "RoadTrip 2015" campaign in January 2015. Clarke denies all allegations. The alleged bullying may have caused a young party member, Elliott Johnson, to commit suicide. The day before Shapps's resignation, Johnson's father had called on Shapps to step down and made the following comments:


title: Grant Shapps

text: In August 2018, the "Financial Times" reported that it had discovered a "secret pay deal" between Shapps and OpenBrix, a British blockchain property portal company. The story alleged that Shapps would have received a payment in cryptocurrency tokens with a future value of up to £700,000. Shapps resigned from OpenBrix and from his position as chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on blockchain which he had founded. Subsequently, Jo Platt, an opposition politician, called for an enquiry into Shapps' conduct, although Shapps maintained that he had confirmed with the standards commissioner that he was not required to register the interest, and that he had recorded the conversation with the relevant official.


title: Grant Shapps

text: Boris Johnson appointed Shapps Secretary of State for Transport upon his accession to Prime Minister. In the February 2020 cabinet reshuffle he retained this portfolio. He was given Cabinet responsibility for the Northern Powerhouse.


title: Grant Shapps

text: On 23 September 2019, Thomas Cook Group fell into administration, leaving more than 150,000 British tourists in need of repatriation. When asked why the Government chose not to bail out the company, Shapps said, "I fear it would have kept them afloat for a very short period of time and then we would have been back in the position of needing to repatriate people in any case."


title: Grant Shapps

text: In October 2019, Shapps, a keen pilot, wrote to the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), urging it to prioritise the protection of aerodromes and cut red tape for pilots. He was accused by Andy McDonald MP, shadow Transport Secretary, of "putting his hobbyhorse aviation ahead of the greater good" at a time when the CAA was involved in Brexit planning, Heathrow Airport expansion, and dealing with the collapse of Thomas Cook Group. He was later accused by MPs Sarah Olney (Liberal Democrat) and Grahame Morris (Labour) of undermining the CAA by registering his private, UK-based plane in the USA instead of the UK, while Transport Secretary. In 2021, "The Times" reported that the Airfield Advisory Team set up by Shapps within CAA lobbied against redevelopment of private airfields used by general aviation. The newspaper alleged that the team interferes with the government housing plans. He also set up a scheme, offering rebates to pilots who purchase electronic conspicuity devices used to detect positions of other aircraft in the air.


title: Grant Shapps

text: In May 2020, Shapps unveiled investment in cycle lanes totalling £250 million and plans for e-scooters to be trialled on British roads.


title: Grant Shapps

text: In December 2021, Shapps was part of a trio of Cabinet ministers that self-isolated after coming into contact with Australian Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce, who was later diagnosed with COVID-19.


title: Grant Shapps

text: Shapps announced his campaign for leadership of the Conservative Party, following the resignation of Boris Johnson, on 9 July 2022. He withdrew from the race on 12 July, endorsing Rishi Sunak for leader.


title: Grant Shapps

text: Shapps was appointed Home Secretary on 19 October 2022 after the resignation of Suella Braverman. This occurred one day before Prime Minister Liz Truss announced her own resignation.


title: Grant Shapps

text: Shapps was appointed business secretary on 25 October 2022 by Rishi Sunak after the resignation of former business secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg. Suella Braverman replaced Shapps as Home Secretary.


title: Grant Shapps

text: He married Belinda Goldstone in 1997, and the couple have three children. In 1999 Shapps was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma and underwent chemotherapy and radiotherapy recovering from cancer by the following year. As a result of the effects of chemotherapy, his children were conceived by IVF. Owing to his past cancer treatment, in February 2021 Shapps became the first UK Cabinet minister to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. He tested positive for COVID-19 in February 2022.


title: Grant Shapps

text: Shapps lists his recreations in "Who's Who" as "private pilot with IMC [Instrument Meteorological Conditions] and night qualifications".


title: Drag (clothing)

text: The term "drag" refers to the performance of exaggerated masculinity, femininity, or other forms of gender expression, usually for entertainment purposes. A drag queen is someone (usually male) who performs femininity and a drag king is someone (usually female) who performs masculinity. Performances often involve comedy, social satire, and at times political commentary. The term may be used as a noun as in the expression "in drag" or as an adjective as in "drag show".


title: Drag (clothing)

text: The use of "drag" in this sense appeared in print as early as 1870 but its origin is uncertain. One suggested etymological root is 19th-century theatre slang, from the sensation of long skirts trailing on the floor. It may have been based on the term "grand rag" which was historically used for a masquerade ball.


title: Drag (clothing)

text: Men dressed as women have been featured in certain traditional customs for centuries. For example, the characters of some regional variants of the traditional mummers' play, which were traditionally always performed by men, include Besom Bet(ty); numerous variations on Bessy or Betsy; Bucksome Nell; Mrs Clagdarse; Dame Dolly; Dame Dorothy; Mrs Finney; Mrs Frail; and many others.


title: Drag (clothing)

text: The variant performed around Plough Monday in Eastern England is known as the Plough Play (also Wooing Play or Bridal Play) and usually involves two female characters, the young "Lady Bright and Gay" and "Old Dame Jane" and a dispute about a bastard child. A character called Bessy also accompanied the Plough Jags (aka Plough Jacks, Plough Stots, Plough Bullocks, etc.) even in places where no play was performed: "she" was a man dressed in women's clothes, who carried a collecting box for money and other largesse.


title: Drag (clothing)

text: "Maid Marian" of the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance is played by a man, and the Maid Marians referred to in old documents as having taken part in May Games and other festivals with Morris dancers would most probably also have been men. The "consort" of the Castleton Garland King was traditionally a man (until 1956, when a woman took over the role) and was originally simply referred to as "The Woman".


title: Drag (clothing)

text: Cross-dressing elements of performance traditions are a widespread and longstanding cultural phenomena.


title: Drag (clothing)

text: The ancient Roman playwright Plautus' (c. 254 – 184 BCE) "Menaechmi" includes a scene in which Menaechmus I puts on his wife's dress, then wears a cloak over it, intending to remove the dress from the house and deliver it to his mistress. Menaechmus says: “Look at me. Do I look the part?” ["Age me aspice. ecquid adsimulo similiter?"] Peniculus responds: “What in the world have you got on?!” ["Quis istest ornatus tuos?"] Menaechmus says: “Tell me I am gorgeous.” ["Dic hominem lepidissimum esse me."]


title: Drag (clothing)

text: In England, actors in Shakespearean plays, and all Elizabethan theatre (in the 1500s and 1600s), were all male; female parts were played by young men in drag because women were banned from performing publicly. Shakespeare used the conventions to enrich the gender confusions of "As You Like It," and Ben Jonson manipulated the same conventions in "Epicœne, or The Silent Woman" (1609). During the reign of Charles II of England (latter 1600s) the rules were relaxed to allow women to play female roles on the London stage, reflecting the French fashion, and the convention of men routinely playing female roles consequently disappeared.


title: Drag (clothing)

text: In the 1890s the slapstick drag traditions of undergraduate productions (notably Hasty Pudding Theatricals at Harvard College, annually since 1891, and at other Ivy League schools like Princeton University's Triangle Club or the University of Pennsylvania's Mask and Wig Club), and many other universities in which women were not permitted admission, were permissible fare to the same upper-class American audiences that were scandalized to hear that in New York City, rouged young men in skirts were standing on tables to dance the can-can in Bowery dives like The Slide.


title: Drag (clothing)

text: Drag shows were popular night club entertainment in New York in the 20s, then were forced underground, until the "Jewel Box Revue" played Harlem's Apollo Theater in the 1950s with their show, "49 Men and a Girl". For most of the performance, the "girls" were men in glamorous drag. At the end, the "one girl" was revealed to be the dashing young "man" in dinner clothes - Stormé DeLarverie - the MC who had been introducing each of the evening's acts.


title: Drag (clothing)

text: The plot device of the film "Shakespeare in Love" (1998) turns upon the Elizabethan convention of the Shakespearean originals and the changes that came with women being allowed on stage during the reign of Charles II. However, drag remains a strong tradition in British comedy. This is seen in current-day British pantomime, where traditional roles such as the pantomime dame are played by a man in drag and the principal boy, such as Prince Charming or Dick Whittington, is played by a girl or young woman, as well as in comedy troupes such as Monty Python's Flying Circus (formed in the early 1970s).


title: Drag (clothing)

text: Within the dramatic fiction, a double standard historically affected the uses of drag. In male-dominated societies where active roles were reserved to men, a woman might dress as a man under the pressures of her dramatic predicament. In these societies a man's position was above a woman's, causing a rising action that suited itself to tragedy, sentimental melodrama and comedies of manners that involved confused identities. A man dressed as a woman was thought to be a falling action only suited to broad low comedy and burlesque. Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo are an all-male ballet troupe where much of the humor is in seeing male dancers "en travesti;" performing roles usually reserved to females, wearing tutus and dancing "en pointe" with considerable technical skill.


title: Drag (clothing)

text: These conventions of male-dominated societies were largely unbroken before the 20th century, when rigid gender roles were undermined and began to dissolve. This evolution changed drag in the last decades of the 20th century. Among contemporary drag performers, the theatrical drag queen or street queen may at times be seen less as a "female impersonator" per se, but simply as a drag queen. Examples include The Cockettes, Danny La Rue or RuPaul.


title: Drag (clothing)

text: Ballroom culture (also known as "ball culture", and other names) is an underground LGBT subculture that originated in 1920s New York in which people "walk" (i.e., compete) for trophies, prizes, and glory at events known as balls. Ball participants are mainly young African-American and Latin American members of the LGBTQ community. Attendees dance, vogue, walk, pose, and support one another in one or more of the numerous drag and performance competition categories. Categories are designed to simultaneously epitomize and satirize various genders, social classes and archetypes in society, while also offering an escape from reality. The culture extends beyond the extravagant formal events as many participants in ball culture also belong to groups known as "houses", a longstanding tradition in LGBT communities, and racial minorities, where chosen families of friends live in households together, forming relationships and community to replace families of origin from which they may be estranged.<ref name="HIV/AIDS risk reduction strategies for"></ref>


title: Drag (clothing)

text: Ball culture first gained exposure to a mainstream audience in 1990 when its voguing dance style was featured in Madonna's song "Vogue", and in Jennie Livingston's documentary "Paris is Burning" the same year. Voguing is a highly stylized type of modern house dance that emerged in the 1980s and evolved out of 1960s ball culture in Harlem, New York. In 2018, the American television series "Pose" showcased Harlem's ball culture scene of the 1980s and was nominated for numerous awards.


title: Drag (clothing)

text: In Baroque opera, where soprano roles for men were sung by castrati, Handel's heroine Bradamante, in the opera "Alcina," disguises herself as a man to save her lover, played by a male soprano; contemporary audiences were not the least confused. In Romantic opera, certain roles of young boys were written for alto and soprano voices and acted by women "en travestie" (in English, in "trouser roles"). The most familiar trouser role in pre-Romantic opera is Cherubino in Mozart's "Marriage of Figaro" (1786). Romantic opera continued the convention: there are trouser roles for women in drag in Rossini's "Semiramide" (Arsace), Donizetti's "Rosamonda d'Inghilterra" and "Anna Bolena," Berlioz's "Benvenuto Cellini," and even a page in Verdi's "Don Carlo." The convention was beginning to die out with Siebel, the ingenuous youth in Charles Gounod's "Faust" (1859) and the gypsy boy Beppe in Mascagni's "L'Amico Fritz," so that Offenbach gave the role of Cupid to a real boy in "Orphée aux Enfers." But Sarah Bernhardt played Hamlet in tights, giving French audiences a glimpse of Leg (the other in fact being a prosthesis) and Prince Orlovsky, who gives the ball in "Die Fledermaus," is a mezzo-soprano, to somewhat androgynous effect. The use of "travesti" in Richard Strauss's "Rosenkavalier" (1912) is a special case, unusually subtle and evocative of its 18th-century setting, and should be discussed in detail at "Der Rosenkavalier."


title: Drag (clothing)

text: The self-consciously risqué bourgeois high jinks of Brandon Thomas' "Charley's Aunt" (London, 1892) were still viable theatre material in "La Cage aux Folles" (1978), which was remade, as "The Birdcage," as late as 1996.


title: Drag (clothing)

text: Dame Edna, the drag persona of Australian actor Barry Humphries, is the host of several specials, including "The Dame Edna Experience." Dame Edna also tours internationally, playing to sell-out crowds, and has appeared on TV's "Ally McBeal." Dame Edna represents an anomalous example of the drag concept. Her earliest incarnation was unmistakably a man dressed (badly) as a suburban housewife. Edna's manner and appearance became so feminised and glamorised that even some of her TV show guests appear not to see that the Edna character is played by a man. The furor surrounding Dame Edna's "advice" column in "Vanity Fair" magazine suggests that one of her harshest critics, actress Salma Hayek, was unaware Dame Edna was a female character played by a man.


title: Drag (clothing)

text: In 2009, "RuPaul's Drag Race" first premiered as a television show in the United States. The show has gained mainstream and global appeal, and it has exposed multiple generations of audiences to drag culture.


title: Drag (clothing)

text: In the United States, early examples of drag clothing can be found in gold rush saloons of California. The Barbary Coast district of San Francisco was known for certain saloons, such as Dash, which attracted female impersonator patrons and workers.


title: Drag (clothing)

text: William Dorsey Swann was the first person to call himself "queen of drag". He was a former slave, who was freed after the American Civil War, from Maryland. By the 1880s, he was organizing and hosting drag balls in Washington, D.C. The balls included folk dances, such as the cakewalk, and the male guests often dressed in female clothing.


title: Drag (clothing)

text: In the early 20th century, drag—as an art form and culture—began to flourish with minstrel shows and vaudeville. Performers such as Julian Eltinge and Bothwell Browne were drag queens and vaudeville performers. The Progressive Era brought a decline in vaudeville entertainment, but drag culture began to grow in nightclubs and bars, such as Finnochio's Club and Black Cat Bar in San Francisco.


title: Drag (clothing)

text: During this period, Hollywood films included examples of drag. While drag was often used as a last-resort tactic in situational farce (its only permissible format at the time), some films provided a more empathetic lens than others. In 1919, Bothwell Browne appeared in "Yankee Doodle in Berlin". In 1933, "Viktor und Viktoria" came out in Germany, which later inspired "First a Girl" (1935) in the United States. That same year, Katharine Hepburn played a character who dressed as a male in "Sylvia Scarlett". In 1959, drag made a big Hollywood splash in "Some Like It Hot" (1959).


title: Drag (clothing)

text: In the 1960s, Andy Warhol and his Factory scene included superstar drag queens, such as Candy Darling and Holly Woodlawn, both immortalized in the Lou Reed song "Walk on the Wild Side".


title: Drag (clothing)

text: By the early 1970s, drag was influenced by the psychedelic rock and hippie culture of the era. A San Francisco drag troupe, The Cockettes (1970–72), performed with glitter eyeshadow and gilded mustaches and beards. The troupe also coined the term "genderfuck". Drag broke out from underground theatre in the persona of Divine in John Waters' "Pink Flamingos" (1972): see also Charles Pierce. The cult hit movie musical "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" (1975) inspired several generations of young people to attend performances in drag, although many of these fans would not call themselves drag queens or transvestites.


title: Drag (clothing)

text: For many decades, American network television, only the broadest slapstick drag tradition was generally represented. Few American TV comedians consistently used drag as a comedy device, among them Milton Berle, Flip Wilson, and Martin Lawrence, although drag characters have occasionally been popular on sketch TV shows like "In Living Color" (with Jim Carrey's grotesque female bodybuilder) and "Saturday Night Live" (with the Gap Girls, among others). On the popular 1960s military sitcom, "McHale's Navy," Ensign Parker (Tim Conway) sometimes had to dress in drag (often with hilarious results) whenever McHale and/or his crew had to disguise themselves in order to carry out their elaborate schemes. "Gilligan's Island" occasionally features men dressing in women's clothes, though this was not considered drag since it was not for a performance.


title: Drag (clothing)

text: On stage and screen, the actor-playwright-screenwriter-producer Tyler Perry has included his drag character of Madea in some of his most noted productions, such as the stage play "Diary of a Mad Black Woman" and the feature film he based upon it.


title: Drag (clothing)

text: Maximilliana and RuPaul co-star together in the TV show "Nash Bridges" starring Don Johnson and Cheech Marin during the two-part episode "'Cuda Grace". Maximilliana, looking passable, leads one of the investigators to believe he is "real" and sexually advances only to learn that he is, in fact, male, much to his chagrin.


title: Drag (clothing)

text: In the United Kingdom, drag has been more common in comedy, on both film and television. Alastair Sim plays the headmistress Miss Millicent Fritton in "The Belles of St Trinian's" (1954) and "Blue Murder at St Trinian's" (1957). He played the role straight; no direct joke about the actor's true gender is made. However, Miss Fritton is quite non-feminine in her pursuits of betting, drinking and smoking. The gag is that whilst her school sends out girls into a merciless world, it is the world that need beware. Despite this, or perhaps because of Sim's portrayal, subsequent films in the series went on to use actresses in the headmistress role (Dora Bryan and Sheila Hancock respectively). The 21st century re-boot of the series however reverted to drag, with Rupert Everett in the role.


title: Drag (clothing)

text: On television, Benny Hill portrayed several female characters. The Monty Python troupe and The League of Gentlemen often played female parts in their skits. The League of Gentlemen are also credited with the first ever portrayal of "nude drag," where a man playing a female character is shown naked but still with the appropriate female anatomy, like fake breasts and a merkin. Within the conceit of the sketch/film, they are actually women: it is the audience who are in on the joke.


title: Drag (clothing)

text: Monty Python women, whom the troupe called pepperpots, are random middle-aged working/lower middle class typically wearing long brown coats that were common in the 1960s. Save for a few characters played by Eric Idle, they looked and sounded very little like actual women with their caricatural outfits and shrill falsettos. However, when a sketch called for a "real" woman, the Pythons almost always called on Carol Cleveland. The joke is reversed in the Python film "Life of Brian" where "they" are pretending to be men, including obviously false beards, so that they can go to the stoning. When someone throws the first stone too early the Pharisee asks "who threw that," and they answer "she did, she did..." in high voices. "Are there any women here today?" he says, "No no no" they say in gruff voices.


title: Drag (clothing)

text: In the 1970s the most familiar drag artist on British television was Danny La Rue. La Rue's act was essentially a music hall one, following on from a much older, and less sexualised tradition of drag. His appearances were often in variety shows such as "The Good Old Days" (itself a pastiche of music hall) and "Sunday Night at the London Palladium". Such was his popularity that he made a film, "Our Miss Fred" (1972). Unlike the "St Trinians" films, the plot involved a man having to dress as a woman.


title: Drag (clothing)

text: David Walliams and (especially) Matt Lucas often play female roles in the television comedy "Little Britain"; Walliams plays Emily Howard—a "rubbish transvestite", who makes an unconvincing woman.


title: Drag (clothing)

text: In the UK, non-comedic representations of drag acts are less common, and usually a subsidiary feature of another story. A rare exception is the television play (1968) and film (1973) "The Best Pair of Legs in the Business". In the film version Reg Varney plays a holiday camp comedian and drag artist whose marriage is failing.


title: Drag (clothing)

text: Early representations of drag in Canadian film included the 1971 film "Fortune and Men's Eyes", adapted from a theatrical play by John Herbert, and the 1974 film "Once Upon a Time in the East", adapted from a theatrical play by Michel Tremblay.


title: Drag (clothing)

text: The 1977 film "Outrageous!", starring Canadian drag queen Craig Russell as a fictionalized version of himself, was an important milestone in Canadian film, as one of the first gay-themed films ever to receive widespread theatrical distribution in North America. A sequel film, "Too Outrageous!", was released in 1987.


title: Drag (clothing)

text: In the 1980s, the sketch comedy series "CODCO" and "The Kids in the Hall" both made prominent use of drag performance. "The Kids in the Hall" consisted of five men, while "CODCO" consisted of three men and two women; however, all ten performers, regardless of their own gender, performed both male and female characters. Notably, both troupes also had openly gay members, with Scott Thompson of "The Kids in the Hall" and Greg Malone and Tommy Sexton of "CODCO" being important pioneers of gay representation on Canadian TV in their era. The use of drag in "CODCO" also transitioned to a lesser extent into the new series "This Hour Has 22 Minutes" in the 1990s; although cross-gender performance is not as central to "22 Minutes" as it was in "CODCO", Cathy Jones and Mary Walsh, the two cast members common to both series, both continued to play selected male characters.


title: Drag (clothing)

text: The Canadian film "Lilies", directed by John Greyson and adapted from a theatrical play by Michel Marc Bouchard, made use of drag as a dramatic device. Set in a men's prison, the film centres on a play within a play staged by one of the prisoners; however, as the roles in the play are performed by fellow prisoners, even the female characters within it are played by men, and the film blends scenes in which they are clearly depicted as men performing in their own clothes in the prison chapel with scenes in which they are performing in drag in more "realistic" settings. It became the first gay-themed film ever to win the Genie Award for Best Picture.


title: Drag (clothing)

text: The short-lived French-language sitcom "Cover Girl", aired in 2005 on Télévision de Radio-Canada, centred on three drag queens sharing ownership of a drag cabaret in Montreal.


title: Drag (clothing)

text: In 2017 Ici ARTV aired "Ils de jour, elles de nuit", a documentary series profiling Montreal drag queens Rita Baga, Barbada de Barbades, Gaby, Lady Boom Boom, Lady Pounana and Tracy Trash. The documentary web series "Canada's a Drag", launched on CBC Gem in 2018, has profiled various Canadian drag performers, inclusive of all genders, over three seasons to date.


title: Drag (clothing)

text: "Canada's Drag Race", a Canadian spinoff of the American "RuPaul's Drag Race" franchise, was launched in 2020 on Crave. The same year also saw the release of Phil Connell's film "Jump, Darling", centred on a young aspiring drag queen, and Thom Fitzgerald's film "Stage Mother", about a religious woman who inherits her son's drag club after his death, as well as the comedy web series "Queens", starring several real Toronto-area drag queens.


title: Drag (clothing)

text: OutTV, a Canadian television channel devoted to LGBTQ programming, has aired the documentary series "Drag Heals" and the reality competition series "Call Me Mother". It has also been directly involved as a production partner in some programs filmed in the United States, including "The Boulet Brothers' Dragula" and "Hey Qween!".


title: Drag (clothing)

text: The world of popular music has a venerable history of drag. Marlene Dietrich was a popular actress and singer who sometimes performed dressed as a man, such as in the films "Blue Angel" and "Morocco."


title: Drag (clothing)

text: In the glam rock era many male performers (such as David Bowie and The New York Dolls) donned partial or full drag. This tradition waned somewhat in the late 1970s but was revived in the new wave era of the 1980s, as pop singers Boy George (of Culture Club), Pete Burns (of Dead or Alive), and Philip Oakey (of The Human League), frequently appeared in a sort of semi-drag, while female musicians of the era dabbled in their own form of androgyny, with performers like Annie Lennox, Phranc and The Bloods sometimes performing as drag kings.


title: Drag (clothing)

text: The male grunge musicians of the 1990s sometimes performed wearing deliberately ugly drag—that is, wearing dresses but making no attempt to look feminine, not wearing makeup and often not even shaving their beards. (Nirvana did this several times, notably in the "In Bloom" video.) However, possibly the most famous drag artist in music in the 1990s was RuPaul. Maximilliana worked with RuPaul in the "Nash Bridges" episode "Cuda Grace" and was a regular at the now defunct Queen Mary Show Lounge in Studio City, California until the very end. Max (short for Maximilliana) is most well known for her performance as Charlie/Claire in "Ringmaster: the Jerry Springer Movie." Max has also appeared in other movies including "Shoot or Be Shot" and "10 Attitudes" as well as on television shows including "Nash Bridges" as mentioned above, "Clueless," "Gilmore Girls," "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno," "Mas Vale Tarde with Alex Cambert," "MadTV," "The Tyra Banks Show," "The Tom Joyner Show," "America's Got Talent," and many others.


title: Drag (clothing)

text: In Japan there are several musicians in the visual kei scene, such as Mana (Moi dix Mois and Malice Mizer), Kaya (Schwarz Stein), Hizaki and Jasmine You (both Versailles), who always or usually appear in full or semi-drag.


title: Drag (clothing)

text: A drag queen (first use in print, 1941) is a person, usually a man, that dresses in drag, either as part of a performance or for personal fulfillment. The term "drag queen" distinguishes such men from transvestites, transsexuals or transgender people. Those who "perform drag" as comedy do so while wearing dramatically heavy and often elaborate makeup, wigs, and prosthetic devices (breasts) as part of the performance costume.


title: Drag (clothing)

text: Women who dress as men and perform as hypermasculine men are sometimes called drag kings; however, "drag king" also has a much wider range of meanings. It is currently most often used to describe entertainment (singing or lip-synching) in which there is no necessarily firm correlation between a performer's deliberately macho onstage persona and offstage gender identity or sexual orientation, just as cis men who do female drag for the stage may or may not identify as being either gay or female in their real-life personal identities.


title: Drag (clothing)

text: A bio queen, or female-bodied queen, on the other hand, is usually a woman assigned female at birth and identifying as a woman while performing in the same context as traditional (men-as-women) drag and displaying such features as exaggerated hair and makeup (as an example, the performance of the actress and singer Lady Gaga during her first appearance in the 2018 film "A Star is Born").


title: Pseudorandom number generator

text: A pseudorandom number generator (PRNG), also known as a deterministic random bit generator (DRBG), is an algorithm for generating a sequence of numbers whose properties approximate the properties of sequences of random numbers. The PRNG-generated sequence is not truly random, because it is completely determined by an initial value, called the PRNG's "seed" (which may include truly random values). Although sequences that are closer to truly random can be generated using hardware random number generators, pseudorandom number generators are important in practice for their speed in number generation and their reproducibility.


title: Pseudorandom number generator

text: PRNGs are central in applications such as simulations (e.g. for the Monte Carlo method), electronic games (e.g. for procedural generation), and cryptography. Cryptographic applications require the output not to be predictable from earlier outputs, and more elaborate algorithms, which do not inherit the linearity of simpler PRNGs, are needed.


title: Pseudorandom number generator

text: Good statistical properties are a central requirement for the output of a PRNG. In general, careful mathematical analysis is required to have any confidence that a PRNG generates numbers that are sufficiently close to random to suit the intended use. John von Neumann cautioned about the misinterpretation of a PRNG as a truly random generator, joking that "Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin."


title: Pseudorandom number generator

text: In practice, the output from many common PRNGs exhibit artifacts that cause them to fail statistical pattern-detection tests. These include:


title: Pseudorandom number generator

text: Defects exhibited by flawed PRNGs range from unnoticeable (and unknown) to very obvious. An example was the RANDU random number algorithm used for decades on mainframe computers. It was seriously flawed, but its inadequacy went undetected for a very long time.


title: Pseudorandom number generator

text: In many fields, research work prior to the 21st century that relied on random selection or on Monte Carlo simulations, or in other ways relied on PRNGs, were much less reliable than ideal as a result of using poor-quality PRNGs. Even today, caution is sometimes required, as illustrated by the following warning in the "International Encyclopedia of Statistical Science" (2010).


title: Pseudorandom number generator

text: As an illustration, consider the widely used programming language Java. Up until 2020, Java still relied on a linear congruential generator (LCG) for its PRNG, which is of low quality (see further below). Java support was upgraded with Java 17.


title: Pseudorandom number generator

text: One well-known PRNG to avoid major problems and still run fairly quickly is the Mersenne Twister (discussed below), which was published in 1998. Other higher-quality PRNGs, both in terms of computational and statistical performance, were developed before and after this date; these can be identified in the List of pseudorandom number generators.


title: Pseudorandom number generator

text: In the second half of the 20th century, the standard class of algorithms used for PRNGs comprised linear congruential generators. The quality of LCGs was known to be inadequate, but better methods were unavailable. Press et al. (2007) described the result thus: "If all scientific papers whose results are in doubt because of [LCGs and related] were to disappear from library shelves, there would be a gap on each shelf about as big as your fist."


title: Pseudorandom number generator

text: A major advance in the construction of pseudorandom generators was the introduction of techniques based on linear recurrences on the two-element field; such generators are related to linear-feedback shift registers.


title: Pseudorandom number generator

text: The 1997 invention of the Mersenne Twister, in particular, avoided many of the problems with earlier generators. The Mersenne Twister has a period of 2−1 iterations (≈4.3), is proven to be equidistributed in (up to) 623 dimensions (for 32-bit values), and at the time of its introduction was running faster than other statistically reasonable generators.


title: Pseudorandom number generator

text: In 2003, George Marsaglia introduced the family of xorshift generators, again based on a linear recurrence. Such generators are extremely fast and, combined with a nonlinear operation, they pass strong statistical tests.


title: Pseudorandom number generator

text: In 2006, the WELL family of generators was developed. The WELL generators in some ways improves on the quality of the Mersenne Twister, which has a too-large state space and a very slow recovery from state spaces with a large number of zeros.


title: Pseudorandom number generator

text: A PRNG suitable for cryptographic applications is called a "cryptographically-secure PRNG" (CSPRNG). A requirement for a CSPRNG is that an adversary not knowing the seed has only negligible advantage in distinguishing the generator's output sequence from a random sequence. In other words, while a PRNG is only required to pass certain statistical tests, a CSPRNG must pass all statistical tests that are restricted to polynomial time in the size of the seed. Though a proof of this property is beyond the current state of the art of computational complexity theory, strong evidence may be provided by reducing the CSPRNG to a problem that is assumed to be hard, such as integer factorization. In general, years of review may be required before an algorithm can be certified as a CSPRNG.


title: Pseudorandom number generator

text: It has been shown to be likely that the NSA has inserted an asymmetric backdoor into the NIST-certified pseudorandom number generator Dual_EC_DRBG.


title: Pseudorandom number generator

text: Most PRNG algorithms produce sequences that are uniformly distributed by any of several tests. It is an open question, and one central to the theory and practice of cryptography, whether there is any way to distinguish the output of a high-quality PRNG from a truly random sequence. In this setting, the distinguisher knows that either the known PRNG algorithm was used (but not the state with which it was initialized) or a truly random algorithm was used, and has to distinguish between the two. The security of most cryptographic algorithms and protocols using PRNGs is based on the assumption that it is infeasible to distinguish use of a suitable PRNG from use of a truly random sequence. The simplest examples of this dependency are stream ciphers, which (most often) work by exclusive or-ing the plaintext of a message with the output of a PRNG, producing ciphertext. The design of cryptographically adequate PRNGs is extremely difficult because they must meet additional criteria. The size of its period is an important factor in the cryptographic suitability of a PRNG, but not the only one.


title: Pseudorandom number generator

text: The German Federal Office for Information Security (, BSI) has established four criteria for quality of deterministic random number generators. They are summarized here:


title: Pseudorandom number generator

text: We call a function formula_19 (where formula_20 is the set of positive integers) a pseudo-random number generator for formula_1 given formula_4 taking values in formula_11 if and only if:


title: Pseudorandom number generator

text: It can be shown that if formula_28 is a pseudo-random number generator for the uniform distribution on formula_29 and if formula_30 is the CDF of some given probability distribution formula_1, then formula_32 is a pseudo-random number generator for formula_1, where formula_34 is the percentile of formula_1, i.e. formula_36. Intuitively, an arbitrary distribution can be simulated from a simulation of the standard uniform distribution.


title: Pseudorandom number generator

text: An early computer-based PRNG, suggested by John von Neumann in 1946, is known as the middle-square method. The algorithm is as follows: take any number, square it, remove the middle digits of the resulting number as the "random number", then use that number as the seed for the next iteration. For example, squaring the number "1111" yields "1234321", which can be written as "01234321", an 8-digit number being the square of a 4-digit number. This gives "2343" as the "random" number. Repeating this procedure gives "4896" as the next result, and so on. Von Neumann used 10 digit numbers, but the process was the same.


title: Pseudorandom number generator

text: A problem with the "middle square" method is that all sequences eventually repeat themselves, some very quickly, such as "0000". Von Neumann was aware of this, but he found the approach sufficient for his purposes and was worried that mathematical "fixes" would simply hide errors rather than remove them.


title: Pseudorandom number generator

text: Von Neumann judged hardware random number generators unsuitable, for, if they did not record the output generated, they could not later be tested for errors. If they did record their output, they would exhaust the limited computer memories then available, and so the computer's ability to read and write numbers. If the numbers were written to cards, they would take very much longer to write and read. On the ENIAC computer he was using, the "middle square" method generated numbers at a rate some hundred times faster than reading numbers in from punched cards.


title: Pseudorandom number generator

text: A recent innovation is to combine the middle square with a Weyl sequence. This method produces high-quality output through a long period (see middle-square method).


title: Pseudorandom number generator

text: The following is a very simple PRNG example written in JavaScript. It utilises a sequence of multiplications to output a seemingly random value which is then normalized to be in range 0 to 1. In this example, 15485863 is the 1 000 000th prime number and 2038074743 the 100 000 000th one.


title: Pseudorandom number generator

text: Numbers selected from a non-uniform probability distribution can be generated using a uniform distribution PRNG and a function that relates the two distributions.


title: Pseudorandom number generator

text: First, one needs the cumulative distribution function formula_37 of the target distribution formula_38:


title: Pseudorandom number generator

text: Note that formula_40. Using a random number "c" from a uniform distribution as the probability density to "pass by", we get


title: Pseudorandom number generator

text: is a number randomly selected from distribution formula_38. This is based on the inverse transform sampling.


title: Pseudorandom number generator

text: For example, the inverse of cumulative Gaussian distribution formula_44 with an ideal uniform PRNG with range (0, 1) as input formula_45 would produce a sequence of (positive only) values with a Gaussian distribution; however


title: Pseudorandom number generator

text: Similar considerations apply to generating other non-uniform distributions such as Rayleigh and Poisson.


title: P. J. Kennedy

text: Patrick Joseph Kennedy (January 14, 1858 – May 18, 1929) was an American businessman and politician from Boston, Massachusetts. He and his wife Mary were the parents of four children, including future U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chair and U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. Their grandchildren through Joseph include U.S. President John F. Kennedy, U.S. Attorney General and U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and longtime U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy.


title: P. J. Kennedy

text: After cholera killed his father and brother, Kennedy was the only surviving male in his family. He started work at age fourteen and became a successful businessman, later owning three saloons and a whisky import house. Eventually, he had major interests in coal and banking as well. Kennedy was a major figure in the Democratic Party in Boston. Though he served in both the Massachusetts House of Representatives and the state Senate, he preferred to play a behind-the-scenes role as a party boss.


title: P. J. Kennedy

text: Patrick Joseph Kennedy was born on January 14, 1858, in Boston, Massachusetts. He was the youngest of five children born to Patrick Kennedy (1823-1858) and Bridget Kennedy (née Murphy) (1824-1888). His parents were Irish Catholic immigrants who were both from New Ross, County Wexford. The couple's elder son John had died of cholera in infancy two years before Kennedy was born. Ten months after Kennedy's birth, his father Patrick also succumbed to the infectious epidemic that infested the family's East Boston neighborhood. As the only surviving male, Kennedy was the first family member to receive a formal education. His mother Bridget had purchased an East Boston stationery and notions store where she had worked. The business took off and expanded into a grocery and liquor store.


title: P. J. Kennedy

text: At the age of fourteen, young Kennedy left school (just below high school) to work with his mother and three older sisters, Mary, Joanna, and Margaret, as a stevedore on the Boston docks. In the 1880s, with money he had saved from his modest earnings and help from his mother Bridget, he launched a business career by buying a saloon in Haymarket Square neighborhood near downtown (not the more famous site of a labor demonstration and bombing in Chicago in the 1880s.) In time, he bought a second establishment by the East Boston docks. Next, to capitalize on the social drinking of upper-class Bostonians, Kennedy purchased a third bar in an upscale East Boston hotel, the Maverick House. Before he was thirty, his growing prosperity allowed him to buy a whiskey-importing business.


title: P. J. Kennedy

text: On November 23, 1887, Kennedy married Mary Augusta Hickey (December 6, 1857 – May 6, 1923), daughter of James Hickey and Margaret Martha Field. The couple had four children and remained married until Hickey's death in May 1923. His wealth afforded his family a home on Jeffries Point in East Boston.


title: P. J. Kennedy

text: Kennedy was "always ready to help less fortunate fellow Irishmen with a little cash and some sensible advice." He enjoyed the approval and respect of most folks in East Boston, living on the hill of a mixed classes and income Boston neighborhood of upscale Irish and Protestant elite. A sociable man able to mix comfortably with both the Roman Catholic and the Protestant elite, he moved successfully into politics. Beginning in 1884, he converted his popularity into service as a Democrat, a minority in the then Republican dominant power in the Massachusetts General Court. He served five consecutive one-year terms in the Massachusetts House of Representatives, followed by three two-year terms in the upper chamber in the Massachusetts Senate. Establishing himself as one of Boston's principal Democratic leaders, he gave one of the seconding speeches for incumbent President Grover Cleveland at the party's 1888 national convention of the party in St. Louis. However, he found campaigning, speech making, and legislative maneuvering, to be less appealing than the behind-the-scenes machinations that characterized so much of Boston politics in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. After leaving the Senate and the General Court after many terms in 1895, Kennedy spent the rest of his political career as an appointed elections commissioner, an appointed city fire commissioner, as the backroom boss of Boston's Ward Two, and as a member of his party's unofficial Board of Strategy.


title: P. J. Kennedy

text: By the time of his death in 1929, Kennedy held an interest in a coal company and a substantial amount of stock in a bank, the Columbia Trust Company.


title: P. J. Kennedy

text: In his later years, Kennedy developed degenerative liver disease. In April 1929, he was admitted to Deaconess Hospital to receive treatment. He died there on May 18 at the age of 71. His funeral was held at St. John the Evangelist Church in Winthrop, Massachusetts, on May 21. "The Boston Globe" reported that hundreds of mourners lined the streets to watch Kennedy's funeral procession and businesses in East Boston closed to honor him. Kennedy is buried in Holy Cross Cemetery in Malden, Massachusetts.


title: P. J. Kennedy

text: In 1914, P.J. Kennedy's son Joseph married Rose Fitzgerald (July 22, 1890–January 22, 1995), the eldest daughter of Boston Mayor John F. Fitzgerald (1863–1950). Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. went on to become a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chair and a U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom.


title: P. J. Kennedy

text: Joseph and Rose Kennedy had nine children, including World War II casualty Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., U.S. President John F. Kennedy, Attorney General of the United States and U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy.


title: Ronny Jackson

text: Ronny Lynn Jackson (born May 4, 1967) is an American physician, politician, and retired United States Navy rear admiral who is the U.S. representative for Texas's 13th congressional district.


title: Ronny Jackson

text: Jackson joined the White House Medical Unit in the mid-2000s under George W. Bush, and served as Physician to the President from 2013 to 2018 under Barack Obama and Donald Trump. On March 28, 2018, Trump nominated Jackson to be United States secretary of veterans affairs to succeed David Shulkin. On April 23, 2018, allegations of misconduct and mismanagement during his service in the White House were reported. The administration disputed the allegations. Concern was also expressed about Jackson's lack of management experience. On April 26, 2018, Jackson withdrew his nomination as Secretary of Veterans Affairs.


title: Ronny Jackson

text: On February 2, 2019, Trump appointed Jackson Assistant to the President and Chief Medical Advisor, a new position in the Executive Office. Jackson retired from the Navy on December 1, 2019, and on December 9, he filed to run for Congress in Texas's 13th congressional district. Placing second in the Republican primary, he won a runoff for the nomination and the November 3, 2020, general election.


title: Ronny Jackson

text: Jackson was born to Waymon and Norma Jackson and raised in Levelland, Texas. He has a brother and a sister who live and work in Levelland. He attended Texas A&M University at Galveston, graduating in 1991 with a Bachelor of Science degree in marine biology. He attended medical school at the University of Texas Medical Branch, receiving his MD degree in 1995.


title: Ronny Jackson

text: Jackson became a Navy officer in 1995, when he received his M.D. from the University of Texas Medical Branch. He graduated from the Undersea Medical Officer Program in 1996. Jackson had a series of operational postings, as officer-in-charge and diving medical officer at Explosive Ordnance Disposal Mobile Unit 8 at the naval base in Sigonella, Sicily and diving safety officer at the Naval Safety Center in Norfolk, Virginia. In 2001, he started a residency in emergency medicine, which he completed in 2004. He was clinical faculty physician in the Emergency Medical Residency Program in Portsmouth, Virginia for an additional year before being deployed to Iraq in 2005, where he worked as emergency medicine physician with a surgical shock trauma platoon in Taqaddum.


title: Ronny Jackson

text: In June 2006, Jackson became a physician in the White House Medical Unit (WHMU), ultimately working under three presidents. He became WHMU director in May 2010, and in July 2013 was given the additional title of Physician to the President. In December 2014, Jackson's duties as WHMU director ended, but he continued to be Physician to the President. In January 2017, Jackson made headlines after treating a girl who was bitten by Sunny, one of the Obamas' dogs.


title: Ronny Jackson

text: Jackson continued to be Physician to the President during the Donald Trump administration. Upon taking office, Trump gave Jackson the additional title of Deputy Assistant to the President. Jackson became close to Trump after delivering an hourlong press conference in which he gave a glowing assessment of Trump's health, praising Trump's "incredibly good genes" and his performance on a cognitive test ("exceedingly well") and claiming that "if he had a healthier diet over the last 20 years, he might live to be 200 years old." Jackson was criticized for the statements and accused of misstating Trump's height and weight in order to minimize his obesity. Trump appointed Jackson "Assistant to the President and Chief Medical Advisor" on February 2, 2019.


title: Ronny Jackson

text: Jackson held the Navy rank of captain from May 1, 2010, to October 1, 2016, until he was promoted to rear admiral (lower half). Jackson was nominated for promotion to the two-star rank of rear admiral on March 20, 2018, but the Senate Committee on Armed Services returned the nomination to the president on January 3, 2019, without action. He was renominated by Trump for promotion again on January 15, 2019, but it was again returned to the president without action. Jackson retired from the Navy on December 1, 2019, as a rear admiral (lower half).


title: Ronny Jackson

text: On March 28, 2018, Trump announced that he planned to nominate Jackson to succeed David Shulkin as Secretary of Veterans Affairs. Some senators expressed skepticism of the nomination due to Jackson's lack of management experience.


title: Ronny Jackson

text: On April 23, 2018, the U.S. Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs postponed a hearing on Jackson's nomination after current and former White House medical staff accused him of creating a hostile work environment, excessive drinking on the job, and dispensing medication improperly. Senator Jon Tester told CNN on April 24 that Jackson was known as "the candy man" at the White House, according to around 20 people who brought these concerns to the Veterans' Affairs Senate Committee, because he allegedly handed out Ambien, Provigil, and other prescription drugs "like they were candy".


title: Ronny Jackson

text: CNN also reported that during an overseas trip in 2015, an intoxicated Jackson loudly knocked on a female employee's hotel room door so noisily that the Secret Service reportedly stopped him to prevent him potentially waking up Obama. In response to the CNN story, ABC News reported that the Secret Service had no records of any incidents involving Jackson causing commotions at hotels in 2015 when Secret Service personnel were guarding Obama. Trump responded during a news conference the next day, calling Jackson "one of the finest people that I have met" but also hinting that Jackson might drop out, while blaming Democrats for mounting an unfair attack on his record.


title: Ronny Jackson

text: Jackson withdrew himself from consideration for Secretary of Veterans Affairs on April 26, 2018, after the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs began formally investigating the allegations. He insisted that the allegations were "completely false and fabricated" and said he was withdrawing because the controversy had become a distraction for Trump and his agenda. Jackson returned to work in the White House Medical Unit but did not return to his position as Trump's personal physician; he was replaced in that position by Navy officer Sean Conley, who took over that role a month earlier in acting capacity. The 115th Congress returned this nomination to Trump on January 3, 2019, without it being considered in the Senate Committee on Armed Services.


title: Ronny Jackson

text: In May 2018, after receiving 12 complaints about Jackson's conduct, the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General (OIG) opened an investigation. The investigation stalled from October 2018 to August 2019 because the Trump White House Counsel's Office objected to the investigation and considered invoking executive privilege, but ultimately did not.


title: Ronny Jackson

text: OIG investigators interviewed Jackson and 78 witnesses. The OIG found that its interview of Jackson "was limited in scope and unproductive" because lawyers in the Trump White House Counsel's office insisted upon participating in the interview and "instructed Jackson not to answer any questions concerning events after his appointment as the Physician to the President in July 2013." The OIG report was issued in March 2021.


title: Ronny Jackson

text: On March 2, 2021, the inspector general of the Department of Defense briefed members of Congress on its review. Its report documented Jackson's inappropriate interactions with subordinates and improper use of alcohol while on duty.


title: Ronny Jackson

text: The OIG concluded, by a preponderance of the evidence, that Jackson had "made sexual and denigrating statements about one of his female medical subordinates to another of his subordinates"; that Jackson "drank alcohol with his subordinates in Manila, became intoxicated, and, while in his hotel room, engaged in behavior that witnesses described as screaming and yelling, and behavior that some complained might wake the President"; and that Jackson took Ambien (a sleep medication) during official travel, "raising concerns about his potential incapacity to provide proper medical care during this travel." In addition to findings that Jackson had "engaged in inappropriate conduct involving the use of alcohol" during two presidential trips, the report also found that he "disparaged, belittled, bullied, and humiliated subordinates"; "created a negative WHMU work environment"; and "failed to conduct himself in an exemplary manner and made an unfavorable impact on the overall WHMU command climate."


title: Ronny Jackson

text: After the report was issued, Jackson said that the allegations were a "political hit job because I stood with President Trump" and that they "resurrected those same false allegations from my years with the Obama Administration because I have refused to turn my back on President Trump."


title: Ronny Jackson

text: On December 9, 2019, Jackson filed to run for Congress in Texas's 13th congressional district. The seat came open when 13-term incumbent Republican Mac Thornberry announced he would not seek reelection in 2020. Jackson finished in second place in the Republican primary–the real contest in this heavily Republican district–behind former Texas Cattle Feeders Association lobbyist Josh Winegarner, and the two faced off in a July 14 runoff election for the nomination. Jackson defeated Winegarner, 55.58% to 44.42%. According to "The New York Times", Jackson "ran a campaign based on his close relationship with President Trump." He leveraged that relationship to obtain assistance from two top officials with Trump's reelection campaign, Justin Clark and Bill Stepien.


title: Ronny Jackson

text: In May 2020, Jackson claimed without evidence that Obama had spied on the Trump campaign, and accused him of "[weaponizing] the highest levels of our government to spy on President Trump." Jackson added, "Every Deep State traitor deserves to be brought to justice for their heinous actions."


title: Ronny Jackson

text: Jackson opposes mask mandates to halt the spread of COVID-19. He has said, "I think that wearing a mask is a personal choice, and I don't particularly want my government telling me that I have to wear a mask."


title: Ronny Jackson

text: Jackson won the general election, taking 79.4% of the vote to Democratic nominee Gus Trujillo's 18.5%. Since Thornberry was elected in the 1994 Republican wave, no Democrat has crossed the 40% mark in the district, and only three have managed 30%.


title: Ronny Jackson

text: Jackson attended the January 6 "Stop the Steal" rally at the White House Ellipse. During the January 6 attack, he was inside the Capitol when members of the Oath Keepers militia allegedly exchanged text messages about protecting Jackson who had "critical data." Oathkeeper leader Stewart Rhodes replied, writing: "Give him my cell". Rhodes was later charged with seditious conspiracy. That same day, during the certification of the 2020 election, Jackson objected to certifying Arizona's and Pennsylvania's electoral votes.


title: Ronny Jackson

text: On May 19, 2021, Jackson voted against legislation to establish the formation of a January 6 commission meant to investigate the storming of the U.S. Capitol. On May 2, 2022, the January 6 committee released a letter to Jackson requesting he meet with the committee; in response, Jackson released a statement calling the committee "illegitimate".


title: Ronny Jackson

text: In late February 2021, Jackson and a dozen other Republican House members skipped votes and enlisted others to vote for them, citing the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. But he and the other members were actually attending the Conservative Political Action Conference, which was held at the same time as their absences. In response, the Campaign for Accountability, an ethics watchdog group, filed a complaint with the House Committee on Ethics and requested an investigation into Jackson and the other lawmakers.


title: Ronny Jackson

text: Jackson, along with all other Senate and House Republicans, voted against the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021.


title: Ronny Jackson

text: In June 2021, Jackson was one of 14 House Republicans to vote against legislation to establish June 19, or Juneteenth, as a federal holiday.


title: Ronny Jackson

text: In November 2021, Jackson created a conspiracy theory that Democrats made up the Omicron variant of COVID-19 (he called it "MEV - the Midterm Election Variant") as "a reason to push unsolicited nationwide mail-in ballots" and to "cheat" in the upcoming midterm elections.


title: Ronny Jackson

text: In May 2022, the Office of Congressional Ethics reported that there was "substantial reason" to believe that Jackson had used campaign funds for personal use, to pay for unlimited access for himself and his wife to the Amarillo Club, a private dining club in Amarillo, Texas. Jackson refused to cooperate with the Congressional investigation, and his campaign's treasurer and accounting firm refused to provide documents to investigators.


title: Ronny Jackson

text: In December 2022, Jackson claimed that Representative Katie Porter had asserted that "pedophilia is not a crime" but "an identity", referring to a deceptively edited video of a congressional hearing.


title: Christmas and holiday season

text: The Christmas season or the festive season (also known in some countries as the holiday season or the holidays) is an annually recurring period recognized in many Western and other countries that is generally considered to run from late November to early January. It is defined as incorporating at least Christmas Day, New Year's Day, and sometimes various other holidays and festivals. It also is associated with a period of shopping which comprises a peak season for the retail sector (the "Christmas (or holiday) shopping season") and a period of sales at the end of the season (the "January sales"). Christmas window displays and Christmas tree lighting ceremonies when trees decorated with ornaments and light bulbs are illuminated are traditions in many areas.


title: Christmas and holiday season

text: In Western Christianity, the Christmas season is synonymous with Christmastide, which runs from December 25 (Christmas Day) to January 5 (Twelfth Night or Epiphany Eve), popularly known as the 12 Days of Christmas, or in the Catholic Church, until the Baptism of the Lord, a Christmas season which can last for more or fewer than twelve days. As the economic impact involving the anticipatory lead-up to Christmas Day grew in America and Europe into the 19th and 20th centuries, the term "Christmas season" began to also encompass the liturgical Advent season, the period observed in Western Christianity from the fourth Sunday before Christmas Day until Christmas Eve. The term "Advent calendar" continues to be widely known in Western parlance as a term referring to a countdown to Christmas Day from the beginning of December, although in retail the countdown to Christmas usually begins at the end of the summer season, and the beginning of September.


title: Christmas and holiday season

text: Beginning in the mid-20th century, as the Christian-associated Christmas holiday and liturgical season, in some circles, became increasingly commercialized and central to American economics and culture while religio-multicultural sensitivity rose, generic references to the season that omitted the word "Christmas" became more common in the corporate and public sphere of the United States, which has caused a semantics controversy that continues to the present. By the late 20th century, the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah and the new African American cultural holiday of Kwanzaa began to be considered in the U.S. as being part of the "holiday season", a term that as of 2013 had become equally or more prevalent than "Christmas season" in U.S. sources to refer to the end-of-the-year festive period. "Holiday season" has also spread in varying degrees to Canada; however, in the United Kingdom and Ireland, the phrase "holiday season" is not widely synonymous with the Christmas–New Year period, and is often instead associated with summer holidays.


title: Christmas and holiday season

text: The winter solstice may have been a special moment of the annual cycle for some cultures even during Neolithic times. This is attested by physical remains in the layouts of late Neolithic and Bronze Age archaeological sites, such as Stonehenge in England and Newgrange in Ireland. The primary axes of both of these monuments seem to have been carefully aligned on a sight-line pointing to the winter solstice sunrise (Newgrange) and the winter solstice sunset (Stonehenge). It is significant that the Great Trilithon was oriented outwards from the middle of the monument, i.e. its smooth flat face was turned towards the midwinter Sun.


title: Christmas and holiday season

text: Saturnalia was an ancient Roman festival in honor of the deity Saturn, held on December 17 of the Julian calendar and later expanded with festivities through December 23. The holiday was celebrated with a sacrifice at the Temple of Saturn, in the Roman Forum, and a public banquet, followed by private gift-giving, continual partying, and a carnival atmosphere that overturned Roman social norms: gambling was permitted, and masters provided table service for their slaves. The poet Catullus called it "the best of days."


title: Christmas and holiday season

text: The earliest source stating December 25 as the date of birth of Jesus was Hippolytus of Rome (170–236), written very early in the 3rd century, based on the assumption that the conception of Jesus took place at the Spring equinox which he placed on March 25, to which he then added nine months. There is historical evidence that by the middle of the 4th century, the Christian churches of the East celebrated the birth and Baptism of Jesus on the same day, on January 8, while those in the West celebrated a Nativity feast on December 25 (perhaps influenced by the Winter solstice); and that by the last quarter of the 4th century, the calendars of both churches included both feasts. The earliest suggestions of a feast of the Baptism of Jesus on January 6 during the 2nd century comes from Clement of Alexandria, but there is no further mention of such a feast until 361, when Emperor Julian attended a feast on January 6 that year.


title: Christmas and holiday season

text: In the Christian tradition, the Christmas season is a period "beginning" on Christmas Day (December 25). In some churches (e.g., the Lutheran Churches and the Anglican Communion), the season continues through Twelfth Night, the day before the Epiphany, which is celebrated either on January 6 or on the Sunday between January 2 and 8. In other churches (e.g., the Roman Catholic Church), it continues until the feast of the Baptism of the Lord, which falls on the Sunday following the Epiphany, or on the Monday following the Epiphany if the Epiphany is moved to January 7 or 8. If the Epiphany is kept on January 6, the Church of England's use of the term "Christmas season" corresponds to the Twelve Days of Christmas, and ends on Twelfth Night.


title: Christmas and holiday season

text: This short Christmas season is preceded by Advent, which begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas Day, coinciding with the majority of the commercialized Christmas and holiday season. The Anglican Communion follows the Christmas season with an Epiphany season lasting until Candlemas (February 2), which is traditionally the 40th day of the Christmas–Epiphany season; meanwhile, in the Lutheran Churches and the Methodist Churches, Epiphanytide lasts until the first day of Lent, Ash Wednesday.


title: Christmas and holiday season

text: The Pew Research Center found that as of 2014, 72% of Americans support the presence of Christian Christmas decorations, such as the nativity scene, on government property; of that 72%, "survey data finds that a plurality (44%) of Americans say Christian symbols, such as nativity scenes, should be allowed on government property even if they are not accompanied by symbols from other faiths." Six in ten Americans attend church services during Christmastime, and "among those who don't attend church at Christmastime, a majority (57%) say they would likely attend if someone they knew invited them."


title: Christmas and holiday season

text: In the United States, the holiday season "is generally considered to begin with the day after Thanksgiving and end after New Year's Day". According to Axelrad, the season in the United States encompasses at least Christmas and New Year's Day, and also includes Saint Nicholas Day. The U.S. Fire Administration defines the "winter holiday season" as the period from December 1 to January 7. According to Chen et al., in China, the Christmas and holiday season "is generally considered to begin with the winter solstice and end after the Lantern Festival". In some stores and shopping malls, Christmas merchandise is advertised beginning after Halloween or even earlier in late October, alongside Halloween items. In the UK and Ireland, Christmas food generally appears on supermarket shelves as early as September or even August, while the Christmas shopping season itself starts from mid-November, when the high street Christmas lights are switched on.


title: Christmas and holiday season

text: Secular icons and symbols, such as Santa Claus, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman, are on display in addition to Christian displays of the nativity. Public holiday celebrations and observances similarly range from midnight mass to Christmas tree lighting ceremonies, church services, decorations, traditions, festivals, outdoor markets, feasts, social gatherings and the singing of carols.


title: Christmas and holiday season

text: The precise definition of feasts and festival days that are encompassed by the Christmas and holiday season has become controversial in the United States over recent decades. While in other countries the only holidays included in the "season" are Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, St. Stephen's Day/Boxing Day, New Year's Eve, New Year's Day and Epiphany, in recent times, this term in the U.S. began to expand to include Yule, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday. The expansion of the holiday season in the U.S. to encompass Thanksgiving is believed to have begun in the 1920s, when in major department stores Macy's and Gimbels launched competing Thanksgiving Day parades to promote Christmas sales. Due to the phenomenon of Christmas creep and the informal inclusion of Thanksgiving, the Christmas and holiday season has begun to extend earlier into the year, overlapping Veterans/Remembrance/Armistice Day, Halloween and Guy Fawkes Night.


title: Christmas and holiday season

text: The exchange of gifts is central to the Christmas and holiday season, and the season thus also incorporates a "holiday shopping season". This comprises a peak time for the retail sector at the start of the holiday season (the "Christmas shopping season") and a period of sales at the end of the season, the "January sales".


title: Christmas and holiday season

text: Although once dedicated mostly to white sales and clearance sales, the January sales now comprise both winter close-out sales and sales comprising the redemption of gift cards given as presents. Young-Bean Song, director of analytics at the Atlas Institute in Seattle, states that it is a "myth that the holiday shopping season starts with Thanksgiving and ends with Christmas. January is a key part of the holiday season." stating that for the U.S. e-commerce sector January sales volumes matched December sales volumes in the 2004–2005 Christmas and holiday season.


title: Christmas and holiday season

text: Many people find this time particularly stressful. As a remedy, and as a return to what they perceive as the root of Christmas, some practice alternative giving.


title: Christmas and holiday season

text: In the United States, the holiday season is a particularly important time for retail shopping, with shoppers spending more than $600 billion during the 2013 holiday season, averaging about $767 per person. During the 2014 holiday shopping season, retail sales in the United States increased to a total of over $616 billion, and in 2015, retail sales in the United States increased to a total of over $630 billion, up from 2014's $616 billion. The average US holiday shopper spent on average $805. More than half of it was spent on family shopping.


title: Christmas and holiday season

text: It is traditionally considered to commence on the day after American Thanksgiving, a Friday colloquially known as either Black Friday or Green Friday. This is widely reputed to be the busiest shopping day of the entire calendar year. However, in 2004 the VISA credit card organization reported that over the previous several years VISA credit card spending had in fact been 8 to 19 percent higher on the last Saturday before Christmas Day (i.e., Super Saturday) than on Black Friday. A survey conducted in 2005 by GfK NOP discovered that "Americans aren't as drawn to Black Friday as many retailers may think", with only 17 percent of those polled saying that they will begin holiday shopping immediately after Thanksgiving, 13 percent saying that they plan to finish their shopping before November 24 and 10 percent waiting until the last day before performing their holiday gift shopping.


title: Christmas and holiday season

text: According to a survey by the Canadian Toy Association, peak sales in the toy industry occur in the Christmas and holiday season, but this peak has been occurring later and later in the season every year.


title: Christmas and holiday season

text: In 2005, the kick-off to the Christmas and holiday season for online shopping, the first Monday after US Thanksgiving, was named Cyber Monday. Although it was a peak, that was not the busiest online shopping day of that year. The busiest online shopping days were December 12 and 13, almost two weeks later; the second Monday in December has since become known as Green Monday. Another notable day is Free Shipping Day, a promotional day that serves as the last day in which a person can order a good online and have it arrive via standard shipping (the price of which the sender pays) prior to Christmas Eve; this day is usually on or near December 16. Four of the largest 11 online shopping days in 2005 were December 11 to 16, with an increase of 12 percent over 2004 figures. In 2011, Cyber Monday was slightly busier than Green Monday and Free Shipping Day, although all three days registered sales of over US$1 billion, and all three days registered gains ranging from 14 to 22 percent over the previous year. Analysts had predicted the peak on December 12, noting that Mondays are the most popular days for online shopping during the holiday shopping season, in contrast to the middle of the week during the rest of the year. They attribute this to people "shopping in stores and malls on the weekends, and ... extending that shopping experience when they get into work on Monday" by "looking for deals ... comparison shopping and ... finding items that were out of stock in the stores".


title: Christmas and holiday season

text: In 2006, the average US household was expected to spend about $1,700 on Christmas and holiday spendings. Retail strategists such as ICSC Research observed in 2005 that 15 percent of holiday expenditures were in the form of gift certificates, a percentage that was rising. So they recommended that retailers manage their inventories for the entire holiday shopping season, with a leaner inventory at the start and new winter merchandise for the January sales.


title: Christmas and holiday season

text: Michael P. Niemira, chief economist and director of research for the Shopping Center Council, stated that he expected gift certificate usage to be between US$30billion and US$40billion in the 2006–2007 holiday shopping season. On the basis of the growing popularity of gift certificates, he stated that "To get a true picture of holiday sales, one may consider measuring October, November, December and January sales combined as opposed to just November and December sales.", because with "a hefty amount of that spending not hitting the books until January, extending the length of the season makes sense".


title: Christmas and holiday season

text: According to the Deloitte 2007 Holiday Survey, for the fourth straight year, gift cards were expected to be the top gift purchase in 2007, with more than two-thirds (69 percent) of consumers surveyed planning to buy them, compared with 66 percent in 2006. In addition, holiday shoppers planned to buy even more cards that year: an average of 5.5 cards, compared with the 4.6 cards they planned to buy the previous year. One in six consumers (16 percent) planned to buy 10 or more cards, compared with 11 percent the previous year. Consumers also spent more in total on gift cards and more per card: $36.25 per card on average compared with $30.22 last year. Gift cards continued to grow in acceptance: Almost four in 10 consumers surveyed (39 percent) would rather get a gift card than merchandise, an increase from the previous year's 35 percent. Also, resistance to giving gift cards continued to decline: 19 percent said they would not like to give gift cards because they're too impersonal (down from 22 percent last year). Consumers said that the cards are popular gifts for adults, teens and children alike, and almost half (46 percent) intend to buy them for immediate family; however, they are hesitant to buy them for spouses or significant others, with only 14 percent saying they plan to buy them for those recipients.


title: Christmas and holiday season

text: What has become known as "Christmas creep" refers to a merchandising phenomenon in which merchants and retailers exploit the commercialized status of Christmas by moving up the start of the holiday shopping season. The term was first used in the mid-1980s, and is associated with a desire of merchants to take advantage of particularly heavy Christmas-related shopping well before Black Friday in the United States and before Halloween in Canada.


title: Christmas and holiday season

text: The term is not used in the UK and Ireland, where retailers call Christmas the "golden quarter", that is, the three months of October through December is the quarter of the year in which the retail industry hopes to make the most profit.


title: Christmas and holiday season

text: In the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom, the Christmas shopping season starts from mid-November, around the time when high street Christmas lights are turned on. In the UK in 2010, up to £8 billion was expected to be spent online at Christmas, approximately a quarter of total retail festive sales. Retailers in the UK call Christmas the "golden quarter", that is, the three months of October to December is the quarter of the year in which the retail industry hopes to make the most money. In Ireland, around early December or late November each year, The Late Late Toy Show is broadcast on Irish television, which features all the popular toys throughout the year being demonstrated and showcased before the holiday season and shopping sprees commence.


title: Christmas and holiday season

text: The Netherlands and Belgium have a double holiday. The first one, the arrival of the Bishop Saint Nicholas and Black Peter, starts about mid November, with presents being given on December 5 or 6. This is a separate holiday from Christmas, Bishop Saint Nick (Sinterklaas) and Santa Claus (Kerstman) being different people. The Netherlands and Belgium often do not start the Christmas season until December 6 or 7, i.e. after Sinterklaas has finished.


title: Christmas and holiday season

text: In France, the January sales are restricted by legislation to no more than four weeks in Paris, and no more than six weeks for the rest of the country, usually beginning on the first Wednesday in January, and are one of only two periods of the year when retailers are permitted to hold sales.


title: Christmas and holiday season

text: In Croatia and Bosnia (predominantly Sarajevo) the sales periods are regulated by the Consumer Protection Act. The January sales period starts on December 27 and can last up to 60 days.


title: Christmas and holiday season

text: In Germany, the "Winterschlussverkauf" (winter sale before the season ends) was one of two official sales periods (the other being the "Sommerschlussverkauf", the summer sales). It begins on the last Monday in January and lasts for 12 days, selling left-over goods from the holiday shopping season, as well as the winter collections. However, unofficially, goods are sold at reduced prices by many stores throughout the whole of January. By the time the sales officially begin the only goods left on sale are low-quality ones, often specially manufactured for the sales. Since a legislative reform to the corresponding law in 2004, season sales are now allowed over the whole year and are no longer restricted to season-related goods. However, voluntary sales still called "Winterschlussverkauf" take place further on in most stores at the same time every year.


title: Christmas and holiday season

text: In Sweden, where the week of the first Advent Sunday marks the official start of the Christmas and holiday season, continuing with Saint Lucy's Day on December 13, followed up by Christmas before the "Mellandagsrea" (between days sell off) traditionally begins on December 27 (nowadays often December 26 or even December 25) and lasts during the rest of the Christmas holiday. It is similar to Black Friday, but lasts longer. They last 34–35 days. Black Friday itself has also gained publicity in Sweden since the early-2010s. The Swedish Christmas and holiday season continues over Epiphany, and finally ends on St. Knut's Day when the children have a Knut's party.


title: Christmas and holiday season

text: In Bosnia (Republika Srpska), Montenegro and Serbia, holiday sales starts in the middle of December and last for at least one month.


title: Christmas and holiday season

text: The Philippines has the longest Christmas season, reportedly. As early as September 1 up until January 9, which is the feast of the Black Nazarene (the season ends on the Feast of the Lord's Baptism on the second Sunday of January or the Monday after Epiphany if the second Sunday is marked as such), Carolers can be typically heard going door to door serenading fellow Filipinos in exchange of money. Over the country, parols (star shaped lanterns) are hung and lights are lit. Simbang Gabi or dawn masses start December 16 and run for nine days until Christmas Eve.


title: Christmas and holiday season

text: Hong Kong has a lot of seasonal activities and traditions to offer around Christmas time. December 25 and 26 are Public Holidays that makes most shops open for shopping. Locals and tourists love to watch the 30-meter Swarovski Christmas tree in the Central as well as the Christmas light displays on buildings on Victoria Harbour. A huge party in Hong Kong called Winterfest is celebrated every year which involves malls, shops, theme parks and other attractions.


title: Christmas and holiday season

text: South Korea's population are 30 percent Christian and Christmas is a Public Holiday. According to the "Washington Post", "Koreans prefer cash Christmas gifts over more creative presents."


title: Christmas and holiday season

text: Singapore widely celebrates Christmas which is a Public Holiday in this country. For six weeks, mid-November to early January, the stretch of Orchard Road glitters with lights from decorated trees and building facades of malls and hotels.


title: Christmas and holiday season

text: Indonesia, a predominantly Muslim country, also celebrated Christmas as a public holiday. Every year, Ministry of Religious Affairs holds the National Christmas Celebration of the Republic of Indonesia. The program started in 1993 as a suggestion from Tiopan Bernhard Silalahi, who was Minister of Administrative and Bureaucratic Reform in the Sixth Development Cabinet, who has Protestant background, to the then President of Indonesia Soeharto. Since that, National Christmas Celebration has been held every year, except in 2004, which was canceled as a condolence for the victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, and in 2018, which was canceled as a condolence for the victims of the 2018 Sunda Strait tsunami. Until 2013, National Christmas Celebration was always held in Jakarta, the most common used venue was Jakarta Convention Center. But since 2014, the tradition was changed by the newly elected President of Indonesia Joko Widodo. and it is now held in a different city each year.


title: Christmas and holiday season

text: A selection of goodwill greetings are often used around the world to address strangers, family, colleagues or friends during the season. Some greetings are more prevalent than others, depending on culture and location. Traditionally, the predominant greetings of the season have been "Merry Christmas", "Happy Christmas", and "Happy New Year". In the mid-to-late 20th century in the United States, more generic greetings such as "Happy Holidays" and "Season's Greetings" began to rise in cultural prominence, and this would later spread to other Western countries including Canada, Australia and to a lesser extent some European countries. A 2012 poll by Rasmussen Reports indicated that 68 percent of Americans prefer the use of "Merry Christmas", while 23 percent preferred "Happy Holidays". A similarly timed Canadian poll conducted by Ipsos-Reid indicated that 72 percent of Canadians preferred "Merry Christmas".


title: Christmas and holiday season

text: The greetings and farewells "Merry Christmas" and "Happy Christmas" are traditionally used in English-speaking countries, starting a few weeks before December 25 each year.


title: Christmas and holiday season

text: These greetings and their equivalents in other languages are popular not only in countries with large Christian populations, but also in the largely non-Christian nations of China and Japan, where Christmas is celebrated primarily due to cultural influences of predominantly Christian countries. They have somewhat decreased in popularity in the United States and Canada in recent decades, but polls in 2005 indicated that they remained more popular than "happy holidays" or other alternatives.


title: Christmas and holiday season

text: "Merry," derived from the Old English "myrige", originally meant merely "pleasant, agreeable" rather than joyous or jolly (as in the phrase "merry month of May").


title: Christmas and holiday season

text: Christmas has been celebrated since at least the 4th century AD, the first known usage of any Christmas greeting dates was in 1534. ""Merry Christmas and a happy new year"" (thus incorporating two greetings) was in an informal letter written by an English admiral in 1699. The same phrase is contained in the title of the English carol "We Wish You a Merry Christmas," and also appears in the first commercial Christmas card, produced by Henry Cole in England in 1843.


title: Christmas and holiday season

text: Also in 1843, Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" was published, during the mid Victorian revival of the holiday. The word "merry" was then beginning to take on its current meaning of "jovial, cheerful, jolly and outgoing." ""Merry Christmas"" in this new context figured prominently in "A Christmas Carol". The cynical Ebenezer Scrooge rudely deflects the friendly greeting: "If I could work my will … every idiot who goes about with 'merry Christmas' on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding." After the visit from the ghosts of Christmas effects his transformation, Scrooge exclaims; "I am as merry as a school-boy. A merry Christmas to everybody!" and heartily exchanges the wish to all he meets. The instant popularity of "A Christmas Carol", the Victorian era Christmas traditions it typifies, and the term's new meaning appearing in the book popularized the phrase "Merry Christmas".


title: Christmas and holiday season

text: The alternative "Happy Christmas" gained usage in the late 19th century, and in the UK and Ireland is a common spoken greeting, along with "Merry Christmas." One reason may be the Victorian middle-class influence in attempting to separate wholesome celebration of the Christmas season from public insobriety and associated asocial behaviour, at a time when "merry" also meant "intoxicated" – Queen Elizabeth II is said to prefer "happy Christmas" for this reason. In her annual Christmas messages to the Commonwealth, Queen Elizabeth has used "Happy Christmas" far more often than "Merry Christmas." Note: "Merry Christmas" has been used only four times: in 1962, 1967, 1970 and 1999. "Happy Christmas" has been used on almost every broadcast since 1956. One year included both greetings, and "blessed Christmas" was used in 1954 and 2007.


title: Christmas and holiday season

text: In the American poet Clement Moore's "A Visit from St. Nicholas" (1823), the final line, originally written as "Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night", has been changed in many later editions to "Merry Christmas to all," perhaps indicating the relative popularity of the phrases in the US.


title: Christmas and holiday season

text: In North America, "happy holidays" has, along with the similarly generalized "season's greetings", become a common seasonal expression, both spoken as a personal greeting and used in advertisements, on greeting cards, and in commercial and public spaces such as retail businesses, public schools, and government agencies. Its use is generally confined to the period between American Thanksgiving and New Year's Day. The phrase has been used as a Christmas greeting in the United States for more than 100 years.


title: Christmas and holiday season

text: The increasing usage of "happy holidays" has been the subject of some controversy in the United States. Advocates claim that "happy holidays" is an inclusive greeting that is not intended as an attack on Christianity or other religions, but is rather a response to what they say is the reality of a growing non-Christian population. Opponents of the greeting generally claim it is a secular neologism intended to de-emphasize Christmas or even supplant it entirely.


title: Christmas and holiday season

text: materialistic, consumerist, atheistic, indifferentist, agnostic, anti-theist, anti-Christian, or even a covert form of Christian cultural imperialism. The phrase has been associated with a larger cultural clash dubbed by some commentators as the "War on Christmas". The Rev. Barry W. Lynn, the executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, has stated the uproar is based on "stories that only sometimes even contain a grain of truth and often are completely false."


title: Christmas and holiday season

text: "Season's greetings" is a greeting more commonly used as a motto on winter season greeting cards, and in commercial advertisements, than as a spoken phrase. In addition to "Merry Christmas", Victorian Christmas cards bore a variety of salutations, including "compliments of the season" and "Christmas greetings." By the late 19th century, "with the season's greetings" or simply "the season's greetings" began appearing. By the 1920s it had been shortened to "season's greetings," and has been a greeting card fixture ever since. Several White House Christmas cards, including U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower's 1955 card, have featured the phrase.


title: Christmas and holiday season

text: Various studies have been performed on the effects of the Christmas and holiday season, which encompasses several feast days, on health. They have concluded that the health changes that occur during the Christmas and holiday season are not reversed during the rest of the year and have a long-term cumulative effect over a person's life, and that the risks of several medical problems increase during the Christmas and holiday season.


title: Christmas and holiday season

text: Yanovski et al. investigated the assertion that the average American gains weight over the season. They found that average weight gain over the Christmas and holiday season is around . They also found that this weight gain is not reversed over the rest of the year, and concluded that this "probably contributes to the increase in body weight that frequently occurs during adulthood" (cf Lent). Research indicates that adults who weigh themselves daily with access to their weight graph tended to avoid holiday weight gain; however, self-weighing tends to decrease during the holiday season. Self-monitoring diet (e.g., food, calories, and fat) and physical activity each day helps adults avoid weight gain during the holidays.


title: Christmas and holiday season

text: Chan et al. investigated the increases in A1C and fasting plasma glucose in type 2 diabetic patients, to see whether these increases were steady throughout the year or varied seasonally. They concluded that the winter holidays did influence the glycemic control of the patients, with the largest increases being during that period, increases that "might not be reversed during the summer and autumn months".