When I was old enough to start questioning authority and the traditions that society tried to foist upon us, I got very indignant about Christmas. Don’t get me wrong – I liked the idea of getting presents. And the idea of adapting a festival of lights into a holiday about the birth of a sun god still has a certain poetic appeal.

My indignation came from the traditions that were co-opted from the Germanic tribes. Christmas trees? Who thought that was a good thing to steal from that culture? After all, there were much better things to grab.

I ranted about this for years. The day after Thanksgiving, I’d dust off my Christmas rant and wouldn’t shelve it until December 26th. I guess my friends got tired of this, because my friend Jason finally told me to put up or shut up.

“I’ve been listening to you bitch about the Christmas tree for three years,” he said. “In all that time, you’ve never once heard you mention what other traditions the Germans could have given us.”

“That’s easy,” I said. “One of the best is when they’d light a giant wheel on fire and roll it down a hill.”

“Why would they do that?”

“It’s a symbol of the sun. You roll the wheel and maybe the sun remembers to come back. Or something like that.” Truth be told, I was actually fair light on the symbolic details of the tradition in question. I just liked the idea of it.

“That sounds cool,” Jason said. “Let’s try it.” That was Jason in a nutshell, really. If someone had a great idea, he’d be willing to try it. Once. If it turned out badly, he’d be far less enthusiastic about trying it again. But he loved trying out new and different ideas that no sane person would contemplate.

We were not same people, though. We were teenage boys.

The hill was no problem to locate. Not in Alexandria. The wheel was a bit more problematic. We decided against a rubber tire and finally stole a wooden one from an antique store in Old Town. One evening after school, we hauled the wheel and a can of kerosene to the top of the hill and applied one to the other, followed closely by a match.

Once the wheel was on fire, we rolled to the edge of the slope and let gravity take care of the rest. In short order, we discovered many things. First, that grass dries out during the winter. Second, that dried grass burns very efficiently. Third, that a well-balanced wheel can move quite quickly and quite far. Fourth, that burning wheels and rush hour traffic do not mix. Fifth, that a stripe of burning grass running up the hill can be a very effective means of pointing out where a flaming wheel came from.

After the screaming and yelling and punishments were all over and done with, we decided that there were probably very good reasons why the Christmas tree was chosen over the flaming wheel tradition. But sometimes you have to work these things out for yourselves, otherwise you run the risk of being an asshole with an opinion that you haven’t bothered to run through a field test.

But isn’t that what being a teenage boy is all about, really?