The Bishop of Lichfield, the Rt Rev Jonathan Gledhill, said Christians should wear [crosses] at work and not be intimidated into putting them away.
He also criticised councils which tried to "rebrand Christmas" for fear of offending other religions.
Such decisions were made out of "sheer ignorance," he said.
As most people know, the sheer ignorance on display is from the Bishop of Lichfield, who has fallen for the tabloid-tripe-cum-urban-mythology surrounding 'Winterval' - a marketing campaign surrounding the winter months by Birmingham City Council several years ago, nothing to do with rebranding Christmas, but which has been repeated and embellished like a ruddy great Christmas tree ever since. "They're banning Christmas because it will upset people of other faiths and there's nothing we can do about it!" the screamsheets like to squawk. It's not just Christmas that starts earlier every year: the bullshit about Christmas being banned turns up before Bonfire Night almost every year nowadays, as well.
As I wrote last year back in September, these stories don't have to be true. A quick bit of fact-checking would expose them for the silliness they are - but obviously would negate the story, and so doesn't take place. And the result is that people like the Bishop of Lichfield - who really ought to know better - get hooked (or should that be crooked?) in.
Also at around this time of year people can be tempted to do the classic "Ooh look! He/she isn't wearing a poppy on television or walking in public! How dare they! The heartless bastard WANTS OUR BOYS TO DIE!" article. Or even, as the Daily Star did last year, the "You can't buy a poppy from these evil brown-skinnned newsagents because they all support terrorism, obviously" story. So those are others to look out for in the coming days.
6 comments:
The real reason Birmingham Council called it "Winterval" was because there were so many festivals around the December month they decided the leave them up to save money and 'brand' them generically.
Well done to the head of strategy on that on I'd say, probably saved the rate payers a few quid.
Oh gawd, I had completely forgotten about this Winterval "PC gawn maaaaaaaad" façade. ("The War On Christmas", is Bill O'Reilly's American equivalent)
You'd think people would see through this....oh, if only
Ahhh you took the words out of my mouth with a 'Winterval'-themed post, was just thinking about this today. I KNEW it was high time some news source picked up on the Winterval mythology for another year. Looking forward to spotting similar stories in the tabloids over the next few weeks. An alarming number of people i know have been quick to fall for the 'THEY'RE TRYING TO BAN CHRISTMAS!' thing. They join Facebook groups about it.
On the subject of poppies - why is everyone wearing them already? They're in all the newspaper mastheads and it's not even November.
You don't know the half of it Anton. Don't know the half of it! Did you know The Daily Mail is directly responsible for a thousand murders! A thousand! This article
here proves it (you have to scroll down past the knife adverts). And it's every bit as well researched and reasoned as the Daily Mail articles. Oh yes! Terrifying! Shouldn't be allowed! Why aren't the government doing something about the Daily Mail? They'll have us all slaughtered in our beds.
Outraged of Swindon.
At least we can be sure that one piece of early Christmas awfulness will be a one-off. Surely nobody'll be listening to the Bob Dylan christmas album next year or ever again. But in the meantime, pity the poor staff of Borders listening to it on repeat all fucking day.
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