(Author Bias: I'm a star man. Its shape just seems to fit more with a tree and besides, since hearing that diddy by Bob Rivers about the angel with the stump up his rump I can no longer look at a tree topped with an angel the same way).

It seems to be a happy dilemma: which do you use to top your tree - an angel or a star?

It is a question for Christmas purists, for sure.

Christmas, at it's core, is a religious observance. Even though the Christmas tree is technically a secular object borne of pagan roots topping it off with a purely scriptural symbol justifies -- in the minds of the pious, at least -- killing a living thing oddly classified as "evergreen". The season is just thick with irony, isn't it?

(Atheists who celebrate secular Christmas love Christmas trees and many I know still put them up in their homes during the season, if anything as a reminder of fond times as children. But how do they top their trees? This must be where things like "Santa bears" come from).

This debate has raged in my house for decades. Each has their own justification.

For those who insist on a star the argument is plain: the star was a sign from heaven of the coming of the Savior, visible near and far and so compelling that men who historians now believe weren't even Christians (or Jew, for that matter) dropped all they were doing as kings in their own lands to seek out what the star foretold. The star came before the angel, the first physical witness of the coming miracle. For many, first means "better" when topping the tree.

It is hard to argue with a celestial sign. But angel toppers believe they have a strong argument of their own.

After all, an angel - capable of speech, and maybe of song - carrying a message of profound sentiment applicable to all peoples in all places and of all belief systems: peace on earth, and to all men goodwill. No little light in the sky can compete with not just one but an entire host of angels (one of whom my daughter was sure was named Harold) who declared glad tidings not to kings but to humble shepherds. Hollywood could not have scripted this better.

So who wins? The never-seen-before-and-not-seen-since star? Or, the host of herald angels?

In this debate whoever gets to the top of the tree first, wins.