The Belfast Bloggee is not a Christmas person and is pretty liverish already. He has drafted a guest rant which I publish below-his views are not necessarily Huttonian's but I too was a bit irritated to see Posh and Becks as Joseph and Mary in the Madame Tussaud's Crib. Joseph wearing a crucifix displaying a great gift of foresight. It does seem ok now to upset Christians but be careful of treading on other toes-Will the Red Cross drop its cross, I wonder. Indeed Ms Klaus has to be careful of the paedophillia angle. The little grandson perched trustingly on the knee of the OZ Father Christmas (see recent rant) may soon be an image of the past. Perhaps FC can buy some time by being gender neutral-away with the beard for a start. Anyhow over to Belfast:
"The absurdity of ‘Political Correctness’ is about to reach its annual zenith of hilarity as the season of turkey fever gets into top gear.
We all know that God is a woman, but the debate about ‘Father’ Christmas rages on. In this non-sexist PC age, the acceptable terminology is surely Person Christmas. But, it is not. While pandering to the suffragettes, the term remains offensive to those of a non-Christian disposition. Thus, the British Red Cross are among the leaders in the PC war by banning any form of Christian expression from their cards. Wonderful, but that is only the start because up and down the land do-good PC’ers have jumped on the bandwagon and are tippexing everything that may or may not cause offence.
Even poor Posh and Becks (who they?) are victims. Their wax images have been dressed up as the mum and dad of a religious leader who was born a couple of thousand years ago. Surely the greater offence is the appearance of Bush and Blair as two of the wise men?
And, what of poor Sinterklass? Leaving aside the issues of gender and religion, the poor man now has to confront his latent paedophilia. A cartoon in a recent satirical magazine shows a fat, fluffy little man seated with his prosthetic legs extending away by a few yards. At the end of one of these is perched a little boy, well out of harms way.
Just how Saint Nicholas, for it is he, got caught up in this mess is a combination of identity theft and moveable feasts. Nick was a fourth century Turkish nobleman who was generous in sharing his fortunes and thus established the gift thing that gives so much pleasure to retailers to this day. Centuries later in northern Europe his followers shuffled his feast day along by a few days to avoid being burnt at the stake for idolatry. They chose December 25th as a handy date because it was already in the book as the birth date of the religious leader mentioned above. The proposition that the latter was more likely born on September 29th 4BC is neither here nor there, but does add an interesting dimension to the whole thing.
Nick’s identity was claimed by various countries and/or religions, but we owe a debt of gratitude to our Yankee cousins for his present reincarnation. The New World was quick to adopt him as it’s own, but more particularly the manufacturers of a foul brown fizzy drink whose advertising image of him we venerate to this day.
Don’t you just wish that it would all go away?"
