Political Correctness vs Christmas

Christmas is upon us. Houses are filled with colourful decorations, shops are full of customers fretting over whether to get slippers or socks for Dad, people are full of cheer and, of course, the newspapers are full of the latest horror stories about how this time of year brings out the worst of our political correctness.

We’ve already seen how British Airways have attempted to ban a Christian member of staff from wearing a visible cross while permitting paraphernalia from other religions, and now that December is here we are beginning to see a flurry of other such stories sure to have the Daily Mail up in arms.

A recent survey of 2,300 employers in the UK by law firm Penisula has found that 74% of bosses are not allowing Christmas decorations in the work place, an increase from 71% last year. They apparently worry that openly celebrating a Christian festival would offend staff of other faiths, with the report summarising that ‘they feel they have little choice in the matter due to the threat of litigation; as they have to protect themselves, their reputation and their livelihood.’ As every year, this story is being supplemented by the usual tales of the local nativity play which has been banned or re-worked in some religiously neutral way or the village church forbidden to hold a Christmas fair.

Perhaps someone reading this can correct me but do people from other religions actually ever get offended by the celebration of Christmas in Britain? Of course Britain is a particularly multicultural nation and it is laudable to respect and support minority religions, but I fail to understand how people living in a traditionally Christian country can be offended if the people of that country openly celebrate major religious festivals. In fact I know many Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and Atheists who love Christmas. When I lived in Oxford in an area populated by many Muslims, every year there were major, council-funded decorations in the street to celebrate Eid. While not wishing to jump on the nationalistic, anti-immigration bandwagon, I do feel it is important to highlight the disparity between how the British authorities treat minority religions – encouraging and funding them to celebrate their faith – and how they treat the majority religion – encouraging Christians not to openly observe their faith and pandering to what must be an absolute minority of non-Christians who claim to be offended by Christmas, the displaying of crosses, etc.

Somewhat ironically, only today Tony Blair was giving a speech in which he emplored those coming to live in Britain to do their best to adapt themselves to 'our essential values - belief in democracy, the rule of law, tolerance, equal treatment for all, respect for this country and it's shared heritage.' This kind of rhetoric does not fit in too well with policies which at times do not seem to treat Christians equally with religious minorities; surely part of this country's 'shared heritage' is its Christian tradition, something which is now all too often buried in an attempt to avoid offending anyone. The Conversative Party were quick to attack Mr Blair for his speech, claiming that Labour's policy of 'divisive multiculturalism and political correctness' has in fact caused many of the problems Mr Blair is now attempting to solve. Too often petty bureaucracy and political correctness have won out over common sense, leaving the majority baffled or angry and minorities no better off.