With a worrying new variant and fears of new coronavirus restrictions, the Daily Telegraph has a message of hope: don’t worry about the virus ruining Christmas, because “the PC brigade” cancelled it long ago.
Celia Walden – the wife, incidentally, of Piers Morgan – writes in Tuesday’s paper that “the fear of causing offence has been systematically running our festive traditions”, with “cancelled school nativities” and “the removal of Jesus” firmly in her crosshairs.
“Christmas was cancelled years ago,” Walden claims. “In this cowardly green and pleasant land, Christians don’t just figure low down on the offence barometer: they don’t figure at all. They are not allowed to feel offence.
“So when, in a leaked email sent last Thursday, a Whitehall official wrote: “We have been advised by the Cabinet Office that we should not use the word Christmas – as the Government campaign needs to be inclusive and some religions don’t celebrate Christmas,” with another attempting to come up with suitable replacements that might “keep the emotional motivation”, one has to wonder where that leaves those whose motivation might be – oh, I don’t know – celebrating the birth of Christ?”
Walden hit out at the pandemic for “severing a few more Christian traditions” – with “any schools still brave enough to push ahead with nativity plays forced to battle against the dual wrath of Covid and the PC brigade.”
And, she concludes: “In this cowardly land, Christians don’t figure at all on the offence barometer.”
Unsurprisingly, social media users had some thoughts.
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