It’s that time of year, we’ve had first sight of the big department stores’ adverts, Cliff Richard has released an album and the annual market stalls, lights (unless you live in Medway) and Ferris Wheels are going up. It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas. So, bang on time, along with complaints about the shops starting to celebrate too early come the annual sightings of Scrooges. These are the local authorities and organisations that get accused of and slated for refusing to celebrate Christmas and instead replacing it with “Winterval”, Seasons Greetings, Happy Holidays or such like.
This year, it’s the turn of the National Trust. Apparently, they’ve expunged Christmas and Easter from their calendars, whilst insisting that volunteers mark a whole host of other events, such as special diversity months and other religious holidays. Except that they haven’t. The calendar in question was a specific programme of “inclusion events”. A spokesperson explains:
“This internal guidance is specifically designed to supplement the National Trust’s year-round programming that includes Christmas and Easter, which are national public holidays and which are celebrated at all properties.”
Now, we might have our opinions on the National Trust’s plans. We may not even partoculalry like their actual plans for Christmas and Easter at their sites (I suspect Christmas will be about trees and Santa whilst Easter will feature bunnies and egg hunts). However, let’s be careful to respond accurately to what is happening. More than that, whilst it seems easy to move into indignant mode and take up the status of innocent victims in a culture war, I wonder whether this is the best use of the opportunities that God gives us at this time of year?
Faithroots 