Society

Thursday

Charlotte Henry

The joy of Boxing Day football

Whether it’s food, music or movies, this time of the year is all about traditions. To my mind, there are few better than Boxing Day football. Across the country, fans like me partake in the ritual of watching our team play a match, the result of which can make or break our Christmas. Teams in other top European leagues get a two-week break over Christmas. But while our neighbours on the continent might enjoy their football-free festivities, over here we have a packed schedule. The number of games being played in just a few days means Boxing Day marks the start of a crucial period of the season. Lose a

Alexander Larman

Beware the middle of Lidl

If you’re a regular, or even an occasional, customer at Lidl, you’ll know what to expect. Own-brand foodstuffs that shamelessly imitate better-known manufacturers and, by doing so, flirt with copyright infringement right up to the edge of legality; a selection of wines, spirits and beers that alternate between excellent value for the money and frankly undrinkable; and, most famously of all, the middle aisle. Slowly, step away from the Middle of Lidl. Your dignity will thank you later For the uninitiated, the middle aisle at Lidl has a unique attraction, mainly for men. It seems to have been based on the sketch from The Fast Show in which a man

Wednesday

Alexander Larman

Why the King’s speech still matters

Later today, the King will address the nation, as he has annually since he acceded the throne in September 2022. This year’s is expected not only to be the most eagerly anticipated and arguably momentous speech that Charles has delivered, but also probably since his mother attempted to make some sense of the chaotic, grief-stricken events of 1997. The King will undoubtedly address his own health struggles, and almost certainly refer to those of his daughter-in-law, the Princess of Wales, as well. And then there are the issues of global conflict, a new prime minister and government, and, for light relief, his continued estrangement from his troublesome younger son. At

Druin Burch

Life and death on the hospital ward at Christmas

Most people shudder at the thought of working on Christmas Day. Not me. I’ve worked as a hospital doctor since 2000 and, most years, come 25 December, I’ll be doing the ward round. As a junior doctor, I didn’t have much choice about doing the Christmas Day shift. But since becoming a consultant, I have usually volunteered for Christmas, and am used to working when others are tucking into their turkey and opening their presents. How lonely must those souls be to regard staying on the wards as festive? I recall being bad tempered one early start, knowing I was missing my two young kids’ excitement, but otherwise the pattern

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

When will the BBC stop adapting Julia Donaldson books?

Another Christmas, another BBC adaptation of a Julia Donaldson story. This time it’s an animated version of Tiddler, the story of a little fish who is always late for school and who makes up tall stories to explain why. The tall stories get around the ocean and when Tiddler gets caught by a fishing boat and tossed back in the sea, he is able to find his way home to Miss Skate and her lesson by following his own stories. Aww. As the CBeebies storyteller observed, ‘What make us powerful is not how big we are but by what’s inside.’ A perfect parable for our day then. The BBC is

Andrew Ziminski

The ancient depictions of the Nativity in England’s churches

For hundreds of years, the 12 days of Christmas have been a significant highlight of the English religious year. In the medieval period, churches in Britain and Ireland were vividly adorned with paintings, stained glass, and sculptures that depicted the Christmas story. Many of these images were destroyed in the Taliban-like wave of destruction that accompanied the English Reformation. But ancient depictions of the Nativity still exist in our churches – as long as you know where to look.  Nativity scenes were uncommon during the early medieval period but they began to be carved into our baptismal fonts from around the 12th century. One of the earliest surviving examples in the UK

Tuesday

Geoff Hill

South Africa dreams of a black Christmas

It’s 38C outside and I’m in a Johannesburg hypermarket owned by the Pick n Pay chain, one of the biggest in South Africa. Despite the heat, their music system has a woman singing ‘Let it snow!’ and songs themed around winter and chestnuts roasting on the fire. In rural areas, the scotch cart is common, a topless buggy pulled by cattle or donkeys, but few here can describe what ‘a one-horse open sleigh’ might look like. Across Pick n Pay and its major competitor known as Checkers, all the Santa props have a light complexion. Not even a black elf. Real holly would wilt in the sun, though it’s grown

Terry Barnes

Australia’s godless Christmas

As Christmas comes around again, we will discover that Australia is no longer a Christian country. According to the most recent census in 2021, Christianity is not a majority faith here and, of its denominations, none has declined more rapidly than Anglicanism – which has lost more than a third of its declared adherents since the turn of this century. Meanwhile, steadily growing non-Christian faiths are headed by Islam, which claimed over 3 per cent of Australians in 2021. Muslims in Australia now outnumber Jews by more than eight to one. Furthermore, the main Anglican and Catholic denominations are more C and E – Christmas and Easter – than C

Angela Epstein

Why this Jew loves Christmas

Merry Christmas – or perhaps, I should say, Season’s Greetings. The festive period can be something of a minefield for the culturally sensitive: even a presumptive or mis-worded greeting, however well meant, may be misconstrued as an affront to diversity and an expression of non-inclusivity. Not least to those who don’t celebrate Christmas, perhaps due to their ethnicity or religion. Being Jewish, this must surely then include me. After all, I don’t sing Christmas carols or believe in the chap with the white beard. So shouldn’t the greatest care be taken when offering greetings of the season or making mention of pigs – pigs! – in blankets? When I make

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

Why was C.S. Lewis such a killjoy at Christmas? A discussion with Alister McGrath

27 min listen

Which 20th-century Scrooge had the following to say about the celebration of Christmas?  ‘It gives on the whole much more pain than pleasure… Anyone can force you to give him a present by sending you a quite unprovoked present of his own. It’s almost blackmail… Can it really be my duty to buy and receive masses of junk every winter just to help the shopkeepers?’ Step forward C.S. Lewis, beloved Christian apologist and children’s author, whose splenetic denunciation of ‘the whole dreary business’ of Christmas and mean-spirited comments about carol singers are hard to reconcile with his reputation for benevolence. To make sense of the author’s views, Damian Thompson is

Francis Young

How Santa came to recruit his elves

The Christmas elf is so familiar now that it could easily be the first character you think of when you hear the word ‘elf’ – outside of J. R. R. Tolkien’s works, that is.  The very recent Christmas custom of the ‘Elf on the Shelf’ has lately brought elves to particular prominence in the modern British Christmas. But how did Santa Claus – whose origin as a folkloric transmogrification of St Nicholas is well known – acquire elves as helpers, and who are they? The origins of the modern Christmas elf turn out to be both complex and surprising, simultaneously ancient and very modern. In the earliest sources which depict Santa living in Lapland,

Joshua Young

A Christmas Carol is the gift that keeps on giving

It was November 1843, two years after Prince Albert first introduced Britain to the tradition of the Christmas tree. Charles Dickens was 31, and yet to grow his beard. A dire report on child labour the previous year had worked him up into a compassionate rage. Just as pressingly, Dickens needed cash. The author was already famous for The Pickwick Papers and Oliver Twist, but the public was struggling with Martin Chuzzlewit and, to top it off, his wife Catherine was pregnant again. Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol in six weeks, amid explosions of laughter and tears at his desk. He knew straight away it was his best work yet,

Monday

Justin Brierley

The surprising truth about the West’s Christian revival

When weeping Parisians watched Notre Dame, the city’s beloved 800-year-old cathedral, being consumed by a devastating fire in 2019, it served as a sad symbol of the decimation of churchgoing itself in France. Ever since revolutionaries began decapitating priests and nuns in the 1790s, a precipitous decline in Catholic faith has been underway in the country. The ‘Last Supper’ debacle of last summer’s Olympic opening ceremony only served to cement the country’s famously secular reputation. In 2023, the number of people attending Church of England services increased by 5 per cent However, against all odds, the bells of Notre Dame will be ringing out again in time for Christmas Day.

Glynn Harrison

Come all ye unfaithful: why do we still go to carol services at Christmas?

This year, Christmas carol services are expected to draw their largest congregations since the pandemic. As numbers attending carol services swell, one central London church has appealed to its regular congregation to donate 12,000 mince pies to give away. Even in the wake of shocking revelations of religious abuse in recent years, those who rarely engage with faith may still find themselves stepping into cathedrals and parish churches this Christmas season. But why will we go? What are we looking for? Can all this sentimentalised longing really be good for us? The sights and sounds of Christmas stir emotions of altruism and goodwill, of warmth and cosiness, of well-being and

Robin Ashenden

Keir Starmer, the Christmas Grinch

If someone were to read the runes, this first Labour Christmas would not augur well. Not only have we had Keir Starmer’s excruciating ‘illuminations countdown’ in Downing Street – a joyless event if ever there was one – but also the cut-price Christmas Tree in Trafalgar Square – perhaps the mangiest conifer the Norwegians, in their gratitude, have ever been able to dump on us. A Hampshire priest has been savaged for telling children that Santa Claus doesn’t exist and now, we’re informed, Gen Z have declared an outright hostility to turkey and trimmings. Just when you thought things couldn’t get any worse, a hoohah has sprung up about the

Sunday

James Tidmarsh

The crisis gripping France’s Le Monde newspaper

Once one of France’s most respected publications, Le Monde is in crisis. Its newsroom is gripped by a climate of fear, where only left-wing and woke views are tolerated, and dissenters whisper their frustrations in the shadows. Once a beacon of intellectual rigour and fearless reporting, an investigation by its rival Le Figaro paints a damning picture of a newspaper strangled by ideological conformity and toxic cancel culture. ‘People are afraid; it’s an omerta,’ admits one anonymous journalist. The glory days of Le Monde are gone, replaced by a paper which appears to be more concerned with parroting the ideological consensus than holding power to account.  Le Figaro’s investigation reveals a newsroom

Damian Reilly Damian Reilly

Tyson Fury was robbed in Riyadh

Watching Tyson Fury get robbed last night in Riyadh, I realised on balance that I am in favour of Saudi Arabia’s often ludicrous-seeming recent efforts at sports-washing. Why not? Sure, staging ultra-high profile boxing matches like this in a nation with no boxing heritage whatsoever is obviously a shameless effort at changing negative perceptions, but it’s also an attempt to integrate with the outside world. Ultimately, integration is a good and civilising thing, not least because it means abiding by different, and in this case better, rules. It’s no coincidence, for example, that it became possible at the start of this year to buy booze in the kingdom. Likewise, it

Charles Amos

What my GB News incest row critics fail to understand

The overwhelming response to my defence of incest on GB News has been one of disgust: I’ve been called a pervert thousands of times over. It’s water off a duck’s back to me.  What is extraordinary is the absence of decent arguments against my liberal position. If reproductive and non-reproductive incest are so bad, why do people resort to personal attacks as opposed to moral arguments? There are two reasons: our evolution has predisposed us to viscerally reject incest; and the moral arguments against incest come unstuck because they risk dreadful consequences.  After stonewalling me at dinner last night, my mum gave the same response to the same question I fear that

Druin Burch

Lucy Letby and the killer nurse I worked with

Most of those commenting on the guilt or innocence of Lucy Letby – the nurse who is serving 15 whole-life jail terms for murdering seven babies and attempting to murder seven others – don’t know what it’s like to work alongside a killer nurse. I do. Benjamin Geen, whom I worked with at Horton General Hospital in Banbury, Oxfordshire, took the lives of at least two patients during his time there. Something in the nature of our interest in murderers has a habit of making us forget logic Geen’s case has, like Letby’s, become popular with conspiracy theorists. Public fascination has been far greater with Letby. But the two cases share an attraction

Theo Hobson Theo Hobson

How to save the parish church

Parish churches are in trouble: about fifty churches close every year, according to a report from Civitas. The review, published last month, strongly echoes the case of the Save the Parish campaign: the Church of England’s leadership has failed to support local parishes, diverting funding to more modern-sounding initiatives. About twenty years ago some bright clerical manager types said that the parish is not good at reaching ‘the networks of contemporary life’, so new looser types of church should be set up. The vague assumption was that these would resemble the amorphous evangelical mega-churches like Holy Trinity Brompton. But no new model has really emerged, and traditionalists are understandably disgruntled.