Notes from a small cavy

Don't stories about the cancelling of Christmas get earlier this year. Last year, we had the hurricane-in-an-espresso-mug over the fact that a school somewhere had thought about (but didn't go ahead with) serving Halal meat at a school. This year, we have the Shock Horror story in the Daily Mail that Christmas is to be down-graded in favour of other religious festivals.

Of course, being the Daily Mail, the story is a load of complete bollocks from start to finish. For a start, it is based on a leaked copy of a draft report rather than being based on government. And for a finish, nowhere in the text of the article is the headline supported. The actual quote from the article is "If we are going to continue as a nation to mark Christmas - and it would be very hard to expunge it from our national life even if we wanted to - then public organisations should mark other religious festivals too.". The report instead seems to be suggesting, rather half-heartedly, that as the United Kingdom is no longer a particularly Christian nation, the nation should no longer be organised around solely Christian lines and there should be an end to such anachronisms as Church of England Bishops being given seats in the House of Lords. But not once in the report quoted by the Daily Mail is there even the slightest smidgen of the tiniest hint of the notion of down-grading even mentioned, in fact the total opposite is said.

Which is not to say that the notion that other religious festivals should be given equal precedence with Christianity is not utter balls. For Christmas, by tradition, has become so divorced from its Christian origins, that it is the perfect secular festival. The Christian origins are still there of course for those who want them, but for the vast secular or non-christian majority of the population, Christmas is a richly deserved excuse for over-indulgence, with the fact that it is based on the birth of a particular religious figure simply one of those interesting bits of historical trivia (as interesting and as irrelevant as the fact that the word Salary derives from Salt Money). Christmas is, unlike Diwali, Hannukah or Ramadan, whatever you want it to be.

Happy Winterval.

Labels: Daily Mail, Politics