Thoughts On Christmas

The Chrismas tree on Edinburgh’s Mound, a traditional gift from Norway

The journalist Polly Toynbee is one of the few English-resident journalists that understands and acknowledges openly why Scotland should restore self-governance. She argues so in television debates, though occasionally stopped by a political opponent when her knowledge is not as comprehensive as those of us who have lived in a subjugated nation and studied colonialism.

What she has to say about commercial Christmas is probably shared by many, certainly worth a discussion. She is not a believer in superstition. Like Toynbee, I was brought up in a Christian society and so now live essentially with a Christian conscience. By family influence, the faiths I was heir to were Catholicism and Judiasm, a heady atmosphere, augmented by a dash of Confucius. As my mind matured I weighed up the choices. I preferred the morality of Confucius.

THE RELIGIOUS BAGGAGE OF CHRISTMAS

by Polly Toynbee

This is the first Christmas since time immemorial that most people in this country are not Christians.

The latest census found those identifying as Christian fell from 59% to 46% in a decade, with 8 million people shifting to “no religion”, which is now the second-largest English group, and the largest in Wales. The number of atheists is probably higher, as some tick the Christian box as their cultural identity, without having any religious belief. In that sense, I feel culturally Christian, so deeply imbued with its myths, paintings, hymns and parables.

But as a vice-president of Humanists UK, I celebrate any decline in superstition, any rise in those who look life and death in the eye with no expectation of anything beyond this earth.

Here comes Christmas. It touches most rationalists as much as believers, reaching deep into the recesses of heart, childhood, memory and family bonds. I will watch A Christmas Carol every year and, whatever production, Muppets or Alastair Sim, I will always shed a tear for the prospect of human redemption. I will watch It’s a Wonderful Life for its belief in collective good at Christmas overcoming the ogres of Pottersville capitalism – never mind Clarence the angel.

In all Christmas messages, the poor inherit the earth, the stable stands for the homeless and refugees, yet the mystery is why so little of this goodwill gets beyond the tinsel into politics. This yuletide’s proposal to send asylum seekers to Rwanda is popular. Sentimental gathering at the crib doesn’t extend to enough outrage at so many children going to school hungry.

Every culture needs a mid-winter festival of light in the darkness, a rebirth in the shortest days. Much as I dislike most Christian belief, the iconography of star, stable, manger, kings and shepherds to greet a new baby is a universal emblem of humanity. In that spirit I relish singing the old carols when I get the chance: I was invited to wonderful John Rutter’s Christmas Celebration with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at the Albert Hall this year.

The dense theology of carols inculcating bizarre concepts skates past most singers – “veiled in flesh the godhead see, hail the incarnate deity” and the sheer impudence of “lo he abhors not the virgin’s womb”. But they arouse ancient emotions more primitive than Christianity. My atheist great-grandfather, Gilbert Murray, a classical scholar and also president of the humanists, called Christmas “Mithras’ birthday”, because Jesus usurped this winter festival from him.

But the rest of it, I find loathsome. Why wear the symbol of a barbaric torture? Martyrdom is a repugnant virtue, so too the imposition of perpetual guilt. The nuns taught my mother as a child that Jesus felt every act of naughtiness as another thorn in his crown. And how impossible it is to worship an all-good yet all-powerful God the father, God the king, who inflicts random horrors on his people while demanding praise, thanks and glorification. Give me the badly behaved quarrelsome gods of Valhalla, the Greeks and Romans.

The greatest myth of Christianity is that it was a force for civilisation that drove out pagan brutality. I’ve been reading Catherine Nixey’s The Darkening Age, which recounts the destruction wreaked by fanatical early Christians, who permitted no heresy, hacked down temples and burned ancient classical texts. Far from noble monks preserving classical writings, most were gleefully destroyed by Christians. Palmyra, in Syria, the scene of an atrocity by Islamic State in 2015, when it blew up great temples and executed the 82-year-old head of antiquities, was only a repetition of what black-hooded Christian madmen did there in the fourth century, smashing and decapitating a vast statue of Athena, gouging out statues’ eyes and chiselling in crosses.

Nixey says monotheistic religions are most prone to causing extreme religious terror. History written by the victors obliterated how hard the classical forces of reason, learning, mathematics and philosophy resisted insurgent Christian unreason.

That’s all long ago, remote from the fading remnants of our Church of England, which can these days be progressive on some matters – not on sex, but on social injustice, arousing ministerial wrath for defending the weak. The Tory MP Jonathan Gullis rightly faced mockery for telling bishops “to stop preaching from the pulpit” over the wicked plan for Rwanda deportations.

Yet despite the apparent waning of religion, the church retains a political grip quite disproportionate to its shrinking numbers. At the coronation, King Charles he is anointed as defender of the faith, though he will say he serves all faiths (not atheists). Innocuous? Not at all. This established church, with 26 bishops in the Lords, is already resisting Labour’s plan for its abolition.

Why are a third of state schools still religious, mainly Church of England and Catholic; many highly selective? In Northern Ireland, only 7% attend integrated schools. Far from abandoning a compulsory Christian “collective act of worship”, Nick Gibb, the schools minister, threatens to “investigate” any schools that don’t ensure one takes place every day.

Most alarming, 6,000 children attend unregistered, illegal schools, where many study religious texts, often misogynist, homophobic and abusive, with virtually no schools prosecuted. An act to close loopholes has just been dropped.

But the greatest damage wreaked by the enduring grip of religion affects every single one of us sooner or later. Organised opposition has time and again blocked our right to die with dignity at a time of our own choosing. A greatly disproportionate number in both Houses are religious and they fight every time: only their God, they say, can decide the time of our passing. Meanwhile, every day people suffer needlessly.

So Christmas comes with good cheer, enjoy it. But know that it comes with religious baggage to shed.

NOTE:

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian journalist and Vice-President of the Humanists,’ a national charity working on behalf of non-religous people that campaigns for a fairer society and a secular state.

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