There's free speach and there's free speach

Christ taking a wrong turning and ending up on the Farrindgon Road

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I made an entry a few days ago about a violent Sikh demonstration that closed down a play in Birmingham last week. The Sikhs weren't too happy that the play featured a rape taking place in one of their temples.
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This was reported as being an example of an intolerant religious mob suppressing the right of free speech in this country.
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OK. That's clear enough.
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Later on in the week there was another story that reported that at least a quarter of British schools had scrapped their traditional nativity plays because the local authorities did not want to offend people of non Christian faiths.
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No prizes for guessing where I'm going with this one.
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As mentioned in the original post, there's free speech and there's free speech. In my country in the 21st century a story of a child born out of the Love of our Creator should not be played out, but a story about someone being raped by a priest in a temple should be staged as a matter of principle, regardless of who it might offend; even if it is one of the most well integrated ethnic communities in the country.
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As it happens I have never heard anyone of another faith speak out against nativity plays or Christmas in general; not personally, not in the media. I don't actually ever expect to. Why should I? Traditionally in the UK, Christians do their thing. Non Christians do their thing. People may even sit politely through plays featuring other people doing their thing. It's all about tolerance and respecting the truth that all of the main religions seek to answer the same questions and usually come up with pretty similar advice and answers.
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Nativity plays aren’t being cancelled by people of faith. They're being cancelled by people of no faith. This year Christmas, next year Ramadan? The year after that Diwali?
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Cancel nativity plays? Wouldn't it be better to encourage children of other faiths to celebrate their stories instead?
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I listened to the Christmas messages from the Pope, The Archbishop of Canterbury and The Cardinal of Westminster yesterday. All three of them seem pretty much agreed that violence won’t solve the World's problems, particularly in Iraq, and that the money would be better spent on bringing comfort to unfortunate people around the World.
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Which pretty much means that those devout 'Christians' Blair and Bush score nil points as far as the leaders of the Christian World are concerned. Maybe they'll go to Hell. I do not profess to be a devout Christian and I didn't order a murderous, futile war of aggression under the cover of lies. However, I would be bold enough guess that if I did possess these qualities I'd be more than a little concerned that the leaders of the Catholic and Anglican Churches both thought I was a prick.
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As an aside, one story that touched me over Christmas was the news that families of US soldiers killed in the assault on Fallujah had raised $600,000 to buy humanitarian aid for people in Fallujah. Some of the family members were planning to hand material over to the Iraqis today. It's difficult to be cynical about acts like that but I couldn't help thinking that $600,000 wouldn't buy half a cruise missile and the US Government had pumped those babies into Iraq as fast as it could procure them. Those families are peeing in the wind.
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Back home, I've noticed the development of a new argument concerning our attitude to Christmas this year. Every year many people decry the commercialisation of Christmas and say that we should go back to celebrating a more spiritual festival, but this Christmas I've noticed a lot of other people laying down the following argument:

1. Christmas was originally a pagan festival hijacked by Christianity
2. The reduction of the influence of Christianity over Christmas in recent years means that we're moving back towards a more Pagan festival; basically a huge piss-up at the darkest time of the year
3. This is a good thing

The CEO's of Sony, Time Warner, Nike and GAP must rub their grubby little fists with devoutly pagan glee to hear arguments like that bandied about.
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Mmmmm, I think someone cool made this case at some point in the recent past as I've come across quite a few muppets in the media, real life and the web who've parroted this argument, almost word perfectly, as if it is some brilliant flash of inspiration they came up with themselves.
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The one flaw with this argument is that it is complete cobblers.
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Yes, Christmas is a pagan festival. This is not news. Actually, the original festival was largely unchanged except for the names. The Christian version features a sacred Earth Mother and a Divine Son of God undergoing a cycle of birth/ rebirth for the sake of humanity, both familiar concepts to your suave, sophisticated pagan about town.
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Yes, most religions share common myths and themes. There may be some differences in administration and the occasional pope may take out the opposition every now and again, after all they're only human, but the underlying message of almost all religions is the same.
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That's why I can be pretty sure that pagans wouldn’t have approved of the way Christmas is going either. The prospect of multinational corporations chopping down all those scared Oak Groves and pissing dioxin in the Waters of Mother Earth, so that they can mass produce shit for a spiritually numb global population manipulated by greed, insecurity and fear probably wasn't top of the Druid Yule time shopping list.
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And, yes, the nativity story is almost certainly a myth but so is Santa Claus, Wallace and Grommit and Mary Poppins but I don’t hear anyone saying they should be cancelled because they're offensive.
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Next time you hear anyone commenting that it's great that Christmas is becoming more like a pagan feast, please do the whole World a favour and yawn. Loudly
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