{"id":136,"date":"2012-12-05T00:55:00","date_gmt":"2012-12-05T00:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/notung\/?p=136"},"modified":"2012-12-05T00:56:57","modified_gmt":"2012-12-05T00:56:57","slug":"christmas-in-the-uk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/notung\/2012\/12\/05\/christmas-in-the-uk\/","title":{"rendered":"Christmas in the UK"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I’ve been watching the Daily Show for a few years now, and I’ve kept in touch with US news regarding atheism and religion. There’s a\u00a0funny thing<\/a> that crops up every December, usually on Fox News, referred to as the ‘War on Christmas’. It sounds like someone poking fun, but they use the term in all seriousness; there are people, we are told, who want to destroy Christmas. This ‘destruction’ takes the form of saying “Happy Holidays!”<\/a> or taking public space previously set aside for nativity scenes<\/a>. This is strange to me, as I don’t think I’ve ever come across a controversy about Christmas in the UK. It’s quite secular here, and yet everyone says “Happy Christmas” rather than “Happy Holidays”.<\/p>\n

Now, I’m aware of the arguments for not using public space for Nativity scenes. It seems to me that that the American Atheists are technically right on this issue. However my\u00a0preference<\/em>, even as an atheist myself, would be to show the Nativity and other Christian-themed decorations. I suspect this has something to do with my upbringing – it reminds me of all those Christmases as a child, participating in Nativity plays and performing Christmas carols in Winchester City Centre, near the cathedral.<\/p>\n

I celebrate Christmas the traditional way, just as Richard Dawkins does<\/a>. As trite as much of the celebration may be, to my mind there’s something special in the way that everybody puts their repetitive working life on hold for a short time and participates in a nationwide celebration. There’s something special about Christmas carols; of course I’m talking about\u00a0Coventry Carol\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0Hark! The Herald Angels Sing<\/em>, and not\u00a0Do They Know It’s Christmas? <\/em>and Merry Xmas Everybody<\/em>. Even the church services that I had to attend as an apatheistic Boy Scout and pupil at a Church of England school were a welcome and profound change from the hustle of urban life. I still perform in cathedrals and nice churches from time-to-time, and the beauty and sombreness of such places is certainly one aspect of religion that I want to preserve.<\/p>\n

Sadly I won’t be in England this Christmas (for the first time in my life), as I’m moving to Taiwan. Hopefully next year I’ll be able to visit for a month or so to experience another British Christmas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  I’ve been watching the Daily Show for a few years now, and I’ve kept in touch with US news…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/notung\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/notung\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/notung\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/notung\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/notung\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/notung\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/notung\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/notung\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/notung\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}