Vancouver Province
for December 20, 2001

I don’t suppose anyone much likes to change their mind. Somehow, in our society, consistency is a great virtue. Politicians set great store in telling you that they have consistently taken a certain position.

I have long held that the Canadian tradition of Christmas was being stolen from us. Away with Christmas holidays – in with winter vacation. Schools shied away from traditional carol services substituting therefor commercial songs about red nosed reindeer, a snowman that somehow plays jolly games and kids that see Mommy kissing Santa Claus. City Halls no longer wish their citizens a Merry Christmas but a Happy Holiday instead. Nativity scenes disappear from public buildings and public Christmas trees do away with traditional Christmas symbols dangling from their branches. It isn’t the old argument that Christ is being taken out of Christmas - that took place about 100 years ago - but that Christmas is being taken out of Christmas.

I have, over the past decade or so, bemoaned the fact that the traditional Christmas celebration has been neutered. "Dammit!" I would say, with little or no provocation "this is a Christian country and ‘they’ (referring to the huge influx of infidels this land shelters) should respect our traditions".

Let me say, before announcing my volte face, that I am a practicing Christian. But I have changed my mind and here is my reason.

When I analyzed my feelings I could only come to this conclusion – either I felt that Christianity was superior to other faiths and a little triumphalism was at work, or I wanted to force my cultural background on others in the name of Canadian tradition. Moreover, I observed with little effort that the vast majority who felt as I did seldom if ever occupied a pew on Christmas Day, let alone any Sunday morning. In fact, it seemed that the fury with which the neutering of Christmas was greeted was in inverse proportion to the Christianity practiced by the complainant.

I found, over the years, that I had to face some realities.

There are no partial or conditional citizens in Canada. Because I happen to be a Canadian of UK extraction does not give me any position of seniority. (For a long time I resented that fact – though I was careful not to say so.) If that’s so, I have no right to expect publicly financed institutions to favour the religious celebrations of any group. In fact, it’s wrong if they do.

Canada has never been a Christian country. It’s true that for the first hundred years or so Canadians professed Christianity as their religion, even though most didn’t practice that faith, but Canada has never been a clerical state. Such vestiges of clericalism as there were, such as Sunday Observance laws, are long behind us.

It is argued that Christianity is our culture. When you examine that argument, however, you realize that at best it was once the tradition of the majority of our country. There have always been non-Christian Canadians and now they are, if not the majority, very close to it.

Things are different. No one, least of all I, would for a moment suggest that Christians and those who profess that tradition be deprived of, or in any way discouraged from, enjoying their tradition of choice. The question is whether or not public institutions that serve all Canadians should favour the traditions of one group either in serving Canadians or educating them?

After thinking about it and being honest with myself, I have to conclude that they should not.

Having said that, Merry Christmas everyone!