SCROOGE-ING WITH TRADITION

"Other countries celebrate their culture- we seem to have to apologise or be embarrassed about ours."

You know it used to be the day after Thanksgiving that the Christmas season really started, but eager shops are pushing that back more and more each year. This year in early October the local mega marts had Christmas decorations up for sale. And already the Christmas removal squad has begun its sordid work.

In Great Britain, just in time for the festivities to begin, the Institute for Public Policy Research has released a study that calls for more multiculturalism and less traditional British culture.

Labour's favourite think-tank says that because it would be hard to "expunge" Christmas from the national calendar, 'even-handedness' means public organisations must start giving other religions equal footing.
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The report robustly defends multiculturalism - the idea that different communities should not be forced to integrate but should be allowed to maintain their own culture and identities.

And it says immigrants should be required to acquire some proficiency in English and other aspects of British culture "if - but only if - the settled population is willing to open up national institutions and practices to newcomers and give a more inclusive cast to national narratives and symbols".

It adds: "Even-handedness dictates that we provide public recognition to minority cultures and traditions.

"If we are going to continue as a nation to mark Christmas - and it would be very hard to expunge it from our national life even if we wanted to - then public organisations should mark other religious festivals too.

"We can no longer define ourselves as a Christian nation, nor an especially religious one in any sense.

"The empire is gone, church attendance is at historically low levels, and the Second World War is inexorably slipping from memory."

Now, what they say is technically true: England is not a Christian nation even by official definition any more. It is not particularly religious at all, at least in terms of traditional, organized religion. England is not as white as it once was. The question is: does that necessarily mean that they ought to abandon their heritage and traditions? Readers at the Daily Mail responded to this report:

I hope not. We are perfectly capable of celebrating our own festivals without having the Government make it equal in importance to Christmas. We do that anyway. The Government should seriously stop interfering in things that really require no meddling.
-by Anon


What next? For heaven's sake politicians, get a life, leave Christmas alone. This is a Christian country with long standing traditions, do they want to strip us of everything that gives us an identity?

Once we were upheld in the world as a country with common sense and integrity, now we are noted as being the Court Jester of Europe.
-by Al


Councils do mark other celebrations. Our council has had Eid celebrations and now a Diwali one. I always remember a letter in this newspaper from a couple of years ago from a gentleman who had moved to settle in the UK and he said that he was not offended by Christmas and expected us as a people to celebrate our holidays, religious or otherwise. He knew that was part and parcel of life in England when he moved here and enjoyed exchanging gifts with his family as part of the Christmas celebration even though it was not part of his religion. I wish 'they' would stop worrying about offending people who are probably not offended in the least!
-by Nicola


Cromwell tried to ban Christmas.
It led to riots.
-by Andy


Our parents generation and their parents died in two world wars to protect the British way of life... just for these idiots to just give it all away. What a waste! Last one out turn off the lights!
-by Gerryd


I just can't wait to get out of this appalling country. Two more years till my son leaves school and then we're off. This sounds like the sort of drivel we had foisted on us 10 years ago in Birmingham when the council tried to replace Christmas with Winterval! It was a farce and a fiasco then and is even more pathetic now that we are 10 years down the line. Unbelievable.
-by Jessy

Using the typical modern argument of "what can it hurt?" the study says that people should be more multicultural because...

"Multiculturalism can be shown to provide for a fairer and more liberal society and does not necessarily lead to social division and community conflict, as its critics have claimed," it says.

Well if it can be shown, the go to it, but until then the clear lesson of history and experience so far is that it leads to more social division, community conflict, and loss of cultural identity. This attitude of self destruction to make life easier for new members of a community is just simply bizarre to me.

If I moved to Russia, I'd expect to learn Russian and become part of Russian culture while retaining my identity as an individual. I'd celebrate their ways, have their days off, etc. That's part of moving to a new home, you adapt their way of doing things. And here's the thing: most immigrants know and welcome this. It's part of why they moved to this new nation in the first place - they wanted to be part of it.

Yet the multiculti crowd seems obsessed with the idea that we have to abandon what is ours to embrace what is new. There's no rational basis for that, other than a personal loathing for traditional culture one is in and a desire to find some way to wreck it to build a utopia in one's own pattern.

There is a clinging to culture and tradition that's damaging, France under Jacques Chirac was so chauvinistic that they crossed the line into bigotry. It was a treason to speak a word that wasn't French in origin, French culture uber alles. You can go too far, but I hardly think England is suffering from this sort of attitude, nor is it likely to ... unless this kind of thing keeps being implemented.

Christmas, Multiculturalism, England