My wife and I had a bit of a scare last month. We set off after she finished work on Friday 16th December to hunt out a Christmas tree. This is earlier than usual for us – we usually set a deadline of “before the last day of term” (which, this time, was 21st December), but this year we wanted to get the house decorated before the first of our daughters came home from their various parts of the world on the 17th. However, when we got to our Christmas tree vendor of choice, we discovered they had none worth buying. The second place we visited wanted £80 for a scrawny, wonky offering, and I was not willing to indulge them. The third place proved to be impossible to access via road (too icy), so we ended up staring at the last two trees in a fourth place and wondering what had gone wrong with the supply.
I suspect that the supply was not the problem. Rather, it is the buying habits of the great British public which have moved the peak demand for Christmas trees (and other festive decorations) to much earlier in the year. The Christmas Festival is actually Christmas Day and the 11 days that follow it (making together the 12 Days of Christmas). It is these days that are supposed to be the special ones, but I hear a lot of people say they are sick of their decorations by Boxing Day – so they take them down and get life “back to normal” (just as the proper celebration is getting going!). I guess it’s a function of our consumer society and our own human impatience and inability to wait for anything. Still, not to be able to get a half-decent Christmas tree on December 16th was a first for us!
Of course, our society’s understanding of Christmas itself has changed over the years, so perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised. I read that the University of Brighton has issued guidance this year to suggest their staff should refrain from using the word Christmas for fear of offending people of other religions, but they are way out of date. In my experience, Christmas is rarely seen as a Christian festival these days. Cliff Richard’s latest single might declare that Jesus is the heart of Christmas (and for me, he is) but for most people in the increasingly secular UK, the most important character is Santa.
In related news, many of you will have heard that one of the key findings of the 2021 census was that under 50% of British people now claim to be Christian. There was much rejoicing in the National Secular Society, of course, but “claiming to be Christian” and “living by Christian values” are different things, and whilst the NSS might wish it were otherwise, the truth is that most of the values by which we live in the UK have their origins in the teaching of Jesus and his apostles. I’m not convinced that our Christmas celebration is better off for having replaced the Christian message of sacrificial love for the unworthy and helpless with the moralistic Santa narrative, “You’d better watch out…” and “Be good, for goodness’ sake!” Similarly, I wonder, “Is a society governed by non-Christian values really something to celebrate?” The NSS and its supporters should be careful what they wish for. In the meantime, perhaps the rest of us could spend 2023 refreshing our knowledge of the teaching of Jesus and seeing how it brings blessing to the world. And maybe then the trees will be available a little later so we can celebrate Christmas properly!
Best wishes to you all for 2023.