The Christmas lights are going up in my home town of Langport.
Well, I call them ‘Christmas lights’, according to the organisers, they are ‘winter festival’ lights. This is simply a piece of secular bigotry.
Of course, they would argue that the name change is in the name of ‘inclusion,’ but inclusion of whom? Certainly not the inclusion of the majority of people in the world.
Christmas is indeed a Christian festival, but the secularists take delight in disparaging Christian ideas as often as possible, despite the fact that were it not for the Judeo-Christian heritage of the country in which they live, they would not enjoy the freedom of speech that they now take for granted.
The nonsensical claim put forward by those who want to replace ‘Christmas’ with ‘winter festival’, is they are showing sensitivity toward those of other religious traditions. Were it so, they would not seek to take ‘Christ’ out of Christmas.
A second year student in an English secondary school might quickly tell them about the respect felt by Muslims toward Jesus (peace be upon him). Muhammad (peace be upon him) is the final prophet, but Jesus is the prophet who will come as judge at the end of time. Showing disrespect toward Jesus is showing disrespect towards Muslim for whom the Gospels are holy books.
Another student who had studied Hinduism might point out that for Hindus Jesus is a prophet who brings light to the world. One need not be Christian to see Christmas as the coming of light into the world.
The only people who seem to have a problem with the term ‘Christmas’ are the secularists, who with a breathtaking disregard for the wishes of the majority, assume their opinion is normative. ‘Sensitivity’ seems to be a term to cover the imposition of their ideas upon everyone else.
Oddly, one of the arguments that secularists would put forward is that there is a need to safeguard the heritage of local communities.
So what about the heritage of the people of Langport?
I can trace my local lineage back to the 1500s, the Crossmans were in North Petherton in the 1500s, in Middlezoy in the 1600s, and arrived in Langport in the 1700s. Generations of my forebears lie beneath the soil of the local churchyards.
Don’t the traditions of local people matter? Don’t those for whom this place is deep in their identity have a right to be respected?
So what do people in the antipodes call Christmas?
As for those unfortunates in the tropics, where weather conditions hardly change as the Earth swings around the Sun, they have a dilemma.