The Christmas-is-cancelled stories have come early this year thanks to the Bishop of Rome's claim that Christmas is under threat from aggressive secularists. He didn't actually mention Winterval in any of his speeches but that hasn't stopped the tabloids from reviving this hackneyed old story. It is over ten years old now but remarkably persistent.
The truth is that Birmingham City Council never did try to rename Christmas. As an exasperated press officer from the council explained to Oliver Burkeman:
"We get this every year," a press officer sighs, eventually. "It just depends how many rogue journalists you get in any given year. We tell them it's bollocks, but it doesn't seem to make much difference."
According to an official statement from the council, Winterval - which ran in 1997 and 1998, and never since - was a promotional campaign to drive business into Birmingham's newly regenerated town centre. It began in early November and finished in January. During the part of that period traditionally celebrated as Christmas, "there was a banner saying Merry Christmas across the front of the council house, Christmas lights, Christmas trees in the main civil squares, regular carol-singing sessions by school choirs, and the Lord Mayor sent a Christmas card with a traditional Christmas scene wishing everyone a Merry Christmas".
None of this stops the story being repeated by journalists and bloggers desperate to show that Christianity is under threat from some sort of secularist conspiracy.
A typical example is this ill-informed post from Cranmer, one of the most widely read religious blogs. He claims:
Pope Benedict XVI comes to the United Kingdom at a time when the Christian conscience is besieged, the national church cowed and our liberties undermined in ways they have not been for centuries.
He then reels off a series of tabloid stories which show how Christians have been victimised just for being Christians. However, like the Winterval story, when you did a bit deeper you find that these stories are a little more complicated.
Take Duke Amachree sacked, so Cranmer would have us believe, for mentioning God. In fact, Mr Amachree was dismissed for gross misconduct after he released confidential information to the press. The dismissal was upheld by an employment tribunal.
Then there was Jennie Cain, the school receptionist apparently threatened with disciplinary action after complaining that her daughter had been told off in class for talking about Jesus. The school's version of events was somewhat different: Mrs Cain's daughter had told another child she would go to hell for not believing in God. The teacher had told her off for doing so. Mrs Cain then sent out an email to other parents in which she attacked the school and individual members of staff.
Any organisation would discipline an employee for circulating emails making allegations about other employees, regardless of the reason for doing so.
Unfortunately, we will never know the full facts of this case because both parties chose to settle out of court. But this case is more complex than those who peddle the Christian persecution myth would have us believe and is certainly not a clear cut case or religious discrimination.
Cranmer, and the Daily Mail, claimed that teacher Olive Jones was sacked for offering to pray for a sick pupil. Again, there is more to this story. Mrs Jones wasn't sacked; she was invited to a meeting to discuss a complaint from the parents of the pupil. She chose to interpret this invitation as a dismissal. According to the sick child's parents, Mrs Jones wasn't simply offering to pray either. They alleged that, on a number of occasions, after being repeatedly asked not to, Mrs Jones upset their daughter by asking her to pray. In the event, far from being sacked for her behaviour, Mrs Jones was allowed to return to work with little more than a mild rebuke.
And what of Caroline Petrie the nurse suspended for offering to pray for a patient? She was reinstated less than two months later and the disciplinary action against her dropped. This case looks like a misinterpretation of the law by over-zealous managers, which is understandable when you look at the sheer complexity of the religious discrimination legislation brought in by the last Labour government.
The claim that there is a significant level discrimination against Christians in the workplace doesn't stand up to scrutiny. In almost all of the cases where Christians have been dismissed or disciplined, they have been standing on their rights and kicking up a fuss to the point where they have breached their contracts of employment. Employers, themselves often unsure of the law, have been over-accommodating, instead of giving these troublemakers the short-shrift they deserve.
If anything, the aggression is not coming from secularists; it is coming from sanctimonious religious zealots who demand special treatment based on their strongly-held religious beliefs. Muslims were the first to make these demands and Christians have decided to jump on the bandwaggon too.
The Labour government must carry some of the blame for this. By extending anti-discrimination legislation to religion, it created a new set of contradictory and competing legal rights. Inevitably, those who want to make a political or religious point seize on these laws and use them to make trouble in the workplace. Sometimes managers, understandably confused by the law and fearing litigation, make the wrong call. All this leads to a series of increasingly absurd court cases and a headache for employers.
Christianity is not under threat from officialdom either. Like the religious discrimination stories, the scares about councils banning Christmas have little substance behind them. It is highly likely that some councils will not put on Christmas displays and events this year but that decision will be driven by of spending cuts rather than any secularist mission to eradicate Christmas.
None of this will stop the Ban-on-Christmas stories appearing again over the next few months nor the claims of anti-Christian harassment next time some priggish harridan has a hissy fit about her faith in an office full of long suffering colleagues. There is no organised campaign against Christianity in this country but a persecution myth serves the interests of religious groups who want special treatment at the expense of everyone else.
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