What’s Next?

Friendly Christian draws my attention to a depressing story. Apparently Borders have been giving out Christmas Cards with the message ‘O Come all ye faithless’ when people are buying Richard Dawkins’ God Delusion. This is in itself a bit of a non-story, except we seem to have people quite strongly offended by it.

This constant see-saw we play between ‘dominant and must be respected’ and ‘oppressed and must be protected’ is just bizarre. How are we going between being a Christian country and Christians being a ‘punching bag’ and back in the blink of an eye? Of course there have been Christians that have been oppressed, but in this country at least, that’s always been by fellow Christians. There’s a weird, paranoid persecution complex that seems to come out whenever someone sticks a church spokesman in front of a reporter.

Everyone knows the origins Christmas has in pagan festivals and this really shouldn’t bother Christians. Either it’s wonderful the saviour was born it or it isn’t. What annoys me is this constant insistence on ownership of something Christianity co-opted when it has a far bigger meaning to our society. They say Borders are taking a Christian festival and abusing it, and I just don’t see how they get this. To be honest, I don’t think ‘O come all ye faithless’ is a funny joke but then I’m not sure it is a joke at all, I think it’s a very good message for churches. Isn’t Christ for everyone? At Christmas shouldn’t all churches have ‘O come all ye faithless’ written outside? Aren’t the faithless exactly who they want to reach? Aren’t we ‘lost’ without God’s light in our lives? Why aren’t these vicars shaking their heads, saying ‘oh those wacky atheists’ and then demonstrating how to live the gospel by turning the other cheek to any offence and reaching out to those outside their flock?

Why is it that whenever someone does anything to suggest that Christmas may be something more than a Christian holiday, they get torn down? Why does the Archbishop of York write angry letters in newspapers when card shops are selling secular Christmas cards when that’s the Christmas people want? No one wants to shut down churches, no one wants to make Christmas less than what it is or take away what it means to Christians, people just want to come together and celebrate love and practice generosity in the darkest time of the year, just as we have on this island for thousands of years. If Jesus preaches love, why do so many church leaders seem to have a problem with that?

When I’m blogging, I come off a lot of the time as angry because that’s what motivates me to finish writing, but this story just makes me sad. What a horrible world these people live in, to have so much anger in their lives over such a minor thing. How paranoid they must be to see the crowd of Atheists around them jeering in support of this devastating attack on the foundation of their faith. This is the kind of religion I loathe, the religion that seeks to dominate everything and dares to have ‘love’ on its lips when it has nothing but hate in its heart. It’d be a lot simpler if I bought into the idea that all religious people were like that, but I don’t because I know they’re not. All I have to do is go talk to Christians I know to find that. What I don’t understand is how there is such an incredible disconnect between the Christianity I see in those around me and what I see coming from these church leaders. Am I not being exposed to all the real leaders of Christianity because the media only reports on the angry ones? What’s the deal guys?

Today the Telegraph published this delightful article entitled “Scrap Christmas, says New Labour think tank” OMG THOSE COMMUNISTS ARE GOING TO BAN CHRISTMAS!

Of course, if you actually read the article you’d end up with a dreadful opinion of whatever sorry excuse for an editor read this story and decided it made sense. The group, of course, make no recommendation of banning Christmas, they merely state that perhaps other religious festivals should be publicly celebrated as well.

If we break it into sections we can see exactly where to disconnect happens:

A group has said that other religious festivals should be marked as well as Christmas.

Then there’s a quote from the group stating this conclusion as well as DIRECTLY stating they don’t want to ban Christmas.

“If we are going to continue 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 major religious festivals too.

Now Ann Widdecombe stepped in to tell us that to ban Christmas would not be a popular move. Yes! It would not be a popular move, which besides the fact it’s a stupid idea, is why this report doesn’t say we should. (Also Ann the more you remind people about the established church which doesn’t even represent a plurality of Christians any more let along the country, the more we care about disestablishment).

Then the campaign against political correctness joins the debate by saying that that anyone who wants to ban Christmas is “off their political correct heads”. Yes, quite possibly, thankfully the report recommends no such thing, so we’re all safe from those evil politically correct fairies for another day.

Way to keep journalistic standards high Telegraph! Unfortunately this is but one example of the annual attempt by various hack journalists to tell the masses that Christmas is under attack from political correctness, when no such thing is true. The Labour Humanist did an excellent job here of drawing together the absurdity of this annual myth of the war on Christmas.

I’m sure it’s at least slightly ironic that the last people who actually did ban celebrating Christmas weren’t scary atheists, but Cromwell’s Puritans. As it turns out, the last people to ban Christmas were Christians.