Celebrate Christmas

It’s Getting Ridiculous

It’s getting ridiculous isn’t it? I don’t know about your home town, but mine is very quiet this Christmas. Not quiet in a “nobody-shopping” kind of way, because the shops are heaving down there. No, it’s quiet musically in that fewer and fewer shops seem prepared to play Christmassy music. Where are the sleigh bells ringing and Santa kissing Mummy? Where is the town Christmas tree, or the carol singers, or the Salvation Army band playing Christmas music – sacred or secular?

Where are the school nativity plays, the Christingle services or anything else Christmas in our schools? Where is the magical glow of anticipation on our grandchildren’s faces as we tell them the Christmas story? Political correctness, it seems, has virtually robbed us of the wonder of Christmas. Add to that, the very much minority pressure groups like civil liberties demanding the removal of ALL things Christian and you are left with the “holiday season”, or “Happy Holiday”. Not even “Xmas”, an appalling word anyway, is still allowed. The world over, it seems, Christ is being taken out of Christmas - apparently on pain of arrest, prosecution, fines, or even prison.

Well I, for one, will never allow that to happen in my house, nor even in my children’s houses. Christmas without Christ is meaningless. It is reduced to just another meaningless but welcome holiday. It has less meaning than Labour Day, New Year, Valentine’s Day. Actually if you take the Christ out of Christmas we really should ditch the holiday altogether. Of course, that won’t happen will it? Too much profit in it to dump it altogether. Besides, the unions would have a fit if we threatened to take a holiday away from them. Cynical?? No – just truth.

For the purists, of course, we celebrate Christmas on the wrong date anyway. It should be way back in September apparently. Besides which, historically, Christmas is really Christ’s Mass which was celebrated by the church at the time they then assumed His birth took place – and the date kinda stuck didn’t it?

And why does political correctness want to destroy Christmas? Because it may offend somebody – especially the Muslims and Hindus. Really? I reckon that removing Christmas would do a far better job of offence because all their shop owners, and there are plenty here in the UK, would suddenly be deprived of their annual bonus. Again, from experience, many Muslims and Hindus also celebrate Christmas as a time of giving and receiving – even if they don’t celebrate Christ’s centrality to Christmas.

All in all, I find it extremely offensive for anyone to suggest that Christmas be renamed “the Winter Holiday” or the “Holiday Season”. I find it offensive to call it a Holiday Tree and not a Christmas Tree. I find it offensive that schools, especially church run schools, cannot celebrate Christmas with a Nativity Play or carol singing. Yet do any of the people trying to ban Christmas take notice of our offence? Not a chance !

So, let us, as Christians, celebrate Christmas in the manner of David celebrating the return of the Ark of the Covenant. He danced before it praising God with all his might. Let us celebrate by singing carols, maybe dancing round the Christmas Tree, and exchanging gifts and doing even more in our communities to help those with a little less than us.

Christmas is the day we celebrate Christ’s birth. Let’s celebrate it properly remembering ‘the reason for the season’. Christmas is Christianity’s second most holy festival. After Easter, Christmas is the greatest time of joy for Christians. Let us state quite firmly to the world that we will NOT surrender Christmas, nor any other Christian festival. Let us put Christ back as being absolutely central to Christmas.

After all, Easter will be next on the killjoys list. Can you imagine if they suggested scrapping Ramadan for the same reasons?

Enough said??