For most of my life I have disliked the run-up to the British Christmas, on religious grounds. Advent is intended to be like Lent, a time of abstinence. Your thoughts are directed to the Four Last Things — Death, Judgment, Heaven and Hell. The Twelve Days which begin on 25 December are the time for feasting, and the fun lessens if it is pre-empted. Advent is expressed in the great Sentences (‘Drop down dew, ye heavens from above…’ etc.), and in rather mystical hymns like ‘Come, O come Emmanuel’, not in God-rest-ye-merry-figgy-pudding stuff. And even Christmas itself, though certainly joyful, has never been and should not be the most important feast of the Church. It would make no difference to the essence of Christianity if there were no Christmas (though obviously Jesus had to be born), whereas the faith simply would not exist without Easter. So the decorations in offices, the pre-Christmas parties, the paper hats, the displays in shops, the piped carols have always put me in a temper. Once, when I was editor of this magazine, I even removed a holly wreath from the front door in an access of ‘Bah! Humbug!’ feeling. But as the public presence of Christianity in our culture becomes more contested, it is interesting to see how passionately attached to the semi-Christian British Christmas season so many people are. They really hate the idea that Nativity plays cannot be performed in schools or that carol-singers cannot get into hospitals. People have twigged that the attempt to secularise our public space is not really motivated by consideration for other faiths, but is a mild form of persecution. Like most persecutions, it is achieving the opposite of the effect it intends. Belatedly, I support the British Christmas.
This secularisation has put my wife and me to extra work.
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