Christmas is coming...

...the geese are getting fat.
please to put a penny in the old man's hat.
If you haven't got a penny, a ha'penny will do;
if you haven't got a ha'penny, then God bless you.

Dave Hill linked to an article in the Evening Standard, about the annual anti-PC-fest which is apparently beginning. (Anyone seen the new stamps? Santa.) Anyway, Archbishop John Sentanu (York), is bewailing the much-lamented 'decline of Christmas' in this green and sceptred isle. I left a commment on that site, which I then also copied to Dave's site, as it seemed apropos. Dave has now given my comment a post of its own, for which I thank him hugely, and I link to it here. For some reason, probably (duh) the importance of the topic, as well as all the associations of the Christmas story itelf (also duh) I feel quite overwhelmed by this endorsement. And I haven't even made my Christmas lists yet! (Though I did buy some wrapping paper and lovely ribbons.)

Years ago I knew a woman I loved a lot. I was young (22) and she was old (maybe 72). She had a very cosmopolitan friend who lived in Nairobi, which was impossibly exotic to me at the time, and furthermore no one (I mean in Wimbledon, where I then lived) had any thoughts whatsoever then about Islam. One day she told me her friend's flight to London had been delayed - some would-be terrorists had come on board, but had been successfully talked down; one element of that was the Koran he carried in his baggage for just such an occasion, if you can believe that. This was a lot closer to, say, Paul Bowles' time. Joan's friend was able to demonstrate to the jihadis (or whoever they were) that he knew & respected the Koran, and they were placated. But on other occasions, she said, he had worked wonders with his knowledge of the Bible.

Later, sending my children to St Mary's C of E school in liberal, tolerant, Good Old Stoke Newington, I found it full of Sikh kids whose parents thought it better for them to be exposed daily to some religion, rather than none.

But it seems now everyone wants everyone else to toe the line of their own particular orthodoxy. We are definitely losing ground by the acre.

Anyway, Happy Thanksgiving! (Someone tell me when it is?)