CHRISTMAS needs a makeover. To chime with current tastes, let’s call in Ant and Dec and vote out our least favourite aspects. I’ll go first - Christianity!

It’s the Christ part I object to…and the mass. Sure, I’ll be p***ed on the 24th, but it’ll be in celebration of life, love, friends and family and not some saviour’s birth.

Nothing new there, but as I read the national papers last week I began to question exactly how I engage with the…winter festival.

“Kick ‘Em in the Baubles” declared the front page of The Sun with its usual mix of casual thuggery and Carry On innuendo - “PC killjoys want to ban Christmas decorations. We fight back.”

The same paper mocked Channel Four’s decision for a veiled British Muslim to deliver their Christmas message and quote the Christian Institute as saying: “This is just what you expect from Channel 4, which has shown contempt for Christianity and Christian values.”

Shame on you Channel 4 for daring to try something different, shame on you for acknowledging our multi-cultural society and questioning convention - contemptuous!

What is this tradition that The Sun is so valiantly defending:

* Christmas is a winter solstice jubilee hijacked by the Roman Church in order to suppress ribald pagan revelry.

* The modern-day, red-suited Santa Claus was created as unit-shifting propaganda for Coca Cola.

* Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer, a marketing tool dreamt up by a Chicago department store.

* The inalienable right of the West to indulgently squander millions of pounds on unnecessary crap evolved during the late 20th century…so at least that’s authentic.

Which brings me to the second evictee - commercialism. It’s an indication of how tired and traduced the phrase has become that I feel apologetic when using the cliché, “Christmas is a time for giving”.

Not to Nintendo or HMV or Gap or Topman or barmen, but to (great phrase this) “those less fortunate than yourself”.

Two weeks ago, The Sunday Times Magazine launched its Christmas campaign beneath the heading, “The Gift of Sight. Two things you can do with 50p this Christmas. Buy a chocolate bar or stop a child going blind”, and the requisite unshakeable image.

It’s as simple as that - we’re rich, they’re not, let’s share! Fifty pence can provide one child in the developing world with enough vitamin A to protect their eyesight for a year. Puts our threatened tinsel into perspective.

Whether you’re singing Silent Night, Slade, I Have A Little Dredyel or We’re All On Our Way To Mecca (just a joke my Muslim friends), we can all curb our spending enough to observe the one Yuletide tradition that’s worth preserving - goodwill to all men.

Merry Winterval!

*So paedophile killer Robert Oliver has been hounded out of the village where he was living. Well, if he hadn’t been released from prison at all, we wouldn’t have to be using taxpayers’ money to house or protect him at all, would we?

Source: Hackney Gazette

This entry was posted on Monday, December 18th, 2006 at 12:31 pm and is filed under World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.