December 25

Sheila Heti

Sheila Heti (born December 25, 1976) Canadian fiction and nonfiction writer, performance artist - Motherhood (2017)

Read more about Sheila Heti here

Sheila Heti talks about her career
 here


Rod Serling

Rod Serling (born December 25, 1924) U.S. television screenwriter – The Twilight Zone

Read about xx here

Rod Serling opens an episode of The Twilight Zone
 here


Carlos Castaneda

Carlos Castaneda (born December 25, 1923?) Peruvian-American novelist - The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge (1968)

Read more about Carlos Castaneda in this 1998 New York Times article

Carlos Castaneda originally said he was born on Dec. 25, 1935, in Sao Paolo, Brazil, the son of a university professor and a woman who died when he was 7. American immigration records indicated he was born in 1923 in Cajmarca, Peru, the son of a goldsmith, and that his mother died when he was 24. Aside from his dubious biography and shamanlike tales of having doubles, pulverizing glass or powering cars with his spirit is the question of what to make of his books. Few academics regard them as serious scholarship.

Another exposé about Carlos Castaneda in this 2007 Salon article

Among anthropologists, there's no longer a debate. Professor William W. Kelly, chairman of Yale's anthropology department, told me, "I doubt you'll find an anthropologist of my generation who regards Castaneda as anything but a clever con man. It was a hoax, and surely don Juan never existed as anything like the figure of his books. Perhaps to many it is an amusing footnote to the gullibility of naive scholars, although to me it remains a disturbing and unforgivable breach of ethics."