Oh great. It's started already. How I love this.
Yet again the moaning blinkered right wing traditionalists of this country are banging on about banning celebrations of Christmas, replacing it with DIRTY EVIL Muslim festivals that we must all celebrate on pain of death.
Or, in reality, the Daily Mail twisted something Birmingham City Council did in 1997 to meet their own agenda and a bunch of uneducated morons believed it to be true without actually researching what they'd read and to this day we continue to get these people crawling out from under their rocks to rant incoherently about "those bloody foreigners and those PC dogooders ruining everything for everyone"
In 1997, Birmingham decided to hold a huge winter celebration called Winterval, as a way to encourage people into the newly refurbished city centre. It was an attempt to extend the festive season to cover pretty much every festival they possibly could. It started in mid-October with the coming of Diwali and ended in January with the Chinese New Year, and covered Hanukkah, Eid, Ramadan, Bonfire Night, Halloween and lord knows what else in between. At the centre of the whole thing, providing a central backbone, was a whole WEALTH of celebrations connected with a little-known holiday called Christmas. The traditional CHRISTMAS Carol Concert happened, the Frankfurt CHRISTMAS Market lined the streets, and nativity scenes and signs wishing people a MERY CHRISTMAS were everywhere.
And yet apparently the whole thing was designed to ban Christmas from being celebrated because it "offends minorities" *facepalm*
I don't know about you, but a 3-4 month celebration bringing together a whole bunch of festivals and filling a cold winter High Street with light and colour and good food and joy sounds pretty awesome to me. OK, I'm not Christian, but Xmas is still a fantastic time of year, so why not throw in a few more festivals to make it just that little bit more fantastic? After all, the Christians certainly didn't mind founding the holiday on a whole bunch of Pagan traditions from Yuletide (which are the only bits of Xmas I celebrate to be honest), and for some odd reason the site of a Menorah around this time of year doesn't get the right wing's knickers in a twist (in fact, I've seen them crop up on Advent Calendars, which is just weird), so why are Ramadan and Diwali such an issue?
Xmas should be a time of giving, a time of charity and love and peace for all. So why all this fuss about other cultures being allowed to celebrate their festivals? Not particularly peaceful, loving thinking, is it? I say let those of other cultures join in Xmas, and similarly I imagine they'll be more than happy to return the favour with their holidays. It's the very spirit of Xmas in action, coming together and having a huge fucking party for 3 months.
So no, no one is being banned from celebrating Xmas, so don't destroy anyone else's chances to celebrate their holidays this time of year either. If you still have a problem with it, then you sit in your house and be a Scrooge and leave the rest of us to have a great holiday season. Everyone's happy then. Well, except you, but that was your own choice.
As we creep into December, I would like to take the opportunity to say that no matter what you believe, no matter what you celebrate at this time of year, I hope you have a great time. Let's show these short-sighted fools what this time of year is all about!
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