We do indeed say that. The bland and generic "Happy Holidays" is an American cultural import. Integrated ethnic and religious minorities here don't have a problem with other people celebrating Christmas, and just get on with their own festivals. Indoctrinated white people object to Christmas 'on behalf of' minorities.
The 'evergreen' tree is not the only product in Tesco which has had the word 'Christmas' removed from packaging. See also the 'tinsel tree' for example. This is not a mistake or oversight, it is a branding strategy. Tesco's founder, the late Jack Cohen, was too smart to have done something so blatant, despite not being a Christian.
As for the Church of England being a cultural institution, it may behave as if it was one, but we don't have separation of church and state. Unlike the USA, Christianity is a formal part of our political system, whether liberal atheists like that or not. This influence is not merely restricted to bishops in the House of Lords or school prayers; it is deeply embedded in our establishment.
Don’t be daft. It’d be a crap strategy to rename a couple of things but still put them in Christmas boxes with Christmas written on them and go nuts on Christmas branding.
These Tesco products don't have Christmas written on the packaging; that's my point.
Of course Tesco has a Christmas TV advertising campaign, because people buy more at this time of year, but this year's iteration is particularly bad. Two grown men argue over a drawing of a biscuit, reminding us that Christmas is the time to bring up old family resentments and jealous disputes from childhood.
Together with the multicultural advertising at my local Tesco (featuring ‘communities’ plural), it is a reasonable conclusion, not a daft one, that branding staff at the company are pursuing a woke political agenda. I would fully agree that it is a crap strategy, but corporations do make mistakes.
By comparison, the Christmas TV campaigns for its competitors Sainsbury's and Morrisons are about love, food and family; not explicitly religious, but far more positive about the second-most important Christian festival of the year.
I think it is a dumb call by Tesco, but I fundamentally agree with your point of view. This is, as the movie “White Chicks” would put it, a “bitch fit”. I was there, 2,000 years ago in the States when the “war on Christmas” happened. Broken gingerbread men littered the streets. Decorative Santa’s and elves were impaled on sharpened candy canes. Banners of “Merry Christmas” fell from Targets ceilings like Jurassic park. In frankness it was annoying on both counts.
I sympathized with the Christmas folk, me being one of them, and was annoyed by the pre social justice politically correct movement, but the outrage seemed too much. They won though, as shrill as many were. People need to be able to say piss off, I think that’s fair. There is no chance Tesco would sell “holiday candelabras” or whatever an equivalent Islamic symbol would be. If the Christmas crowd overdo it, it just continues the cycle of woke type 1 and 2.
Have you seen Tesco's new TV campaign about family feuds at Christmas? Worst seasonal advertising ever. Of course, the creative industry thinks it's stunning and brave.
Interesting. I think you might have had an overcorrection on the predominance of Christianity with the intention of being more inclusive combined with a constitutional expectation of secularism while we do not have that. We have a Christian state without very many Christians. Because we don’t have many Christians and those we do have tend to regard it as a private matter, there is a cultural tendency to see it as bullying to make fun of Christianity. Going after low-hanging fruit. Because the majority don’t believe in God and speaking publicly of god-belief is regarded as over-sharing and a bit embarrassing, the expectation is to respect religious beliefs but mostly leave them alone. This attitude changes if Christians start trying to claim more of a privileged status for their religion than it already has or impose it on other people. Then the reaction is typically “Keep your supernatural beliefs to yourself and stop being weird if you want us to be tolerant of them.” Because Christianity really does have a privileged status written into our constitution and manifesting in governmental structure and education, people more generally are not inclined to give it any more power than it already has but because Christians generally don’t impose or even display their beliefs, few people see it as urgent to change the constitution. I am one of a few who does. Now, with rising anxiety about Islam, more people are being drawn to Christianity as a counterview, but really as a cultural identification and not as a belief in God. So, they’re not being drawn to the Church of England which is the one which is our state religion but to fringe churches explicitly opposed to immigration or to dogmatic forms of Catholicism. It’s a worry. The alleged War on Christmas here does not actually exist because no-one at all is trying to stop anyone celebrating Christmas explicitly. That rhetoric has been taken from America because over there, some people have.
Helen – as a passionate advocate of Liberalism who lived through the American version of the War on Christmas - perhaps I can offer a perspective you may not be aware of.
The history of the American relationship with the Christmas holiday is not simple. The Puritans who originally settled in Massachusetts Bay banned Christmas celebrations. Pilgrims in Plymouth simply ignored it, viewing it as Pagan. After the War of Independence, Christmas was seen as a “British holiday” and was generally out of favor until Dickens’s A Christmas Carol was published in 1843; it broadly defined the images and traditions of the holiday as practiced in the United States.
The gradual acceptance and the eventual ubiquity of the celebration of the birth of Jesus prompted its declaration as a federal holiday in 1870, initially simply listing the date as one of four “holidays” for federal employees in the District of Columbia (the home of the nation’s capital). It was expanded to all federal employees in 1885, with Congress designating it specifically as “Christmas Day, December 25.” All the States followed suit by 1890, and Christmas has been universally observed by all state governments, with state offices closed on that date, since then.
By the mid-1900s, Christmas was fully institutionalized as a paid holiday in corporate America as well. Except for the most essential services, the overwhelming majority of large US corporations recognized Christmas as a holiday and gave non-essential employees the day off. Not observing Christmas as a holiday was virtually unheard of. Christmas was a big deal, and very big for business: Christmas-related retail activity accounted for as much as a quarter of the total annual revenue in that segment.
And it was explicitly recognized as the commemoration of the birth of Christ, named Christmas, not a generic seasonal holiday. Employees were paid Christmas bonuses; companies held Christmas parties; Christmas trees and ornaments were on sale; all localities, from the smallest to the largest, were decked out in Christmas lights and decorations: trumpeting angels, stars of Bethlehem, etc., etc. Radio stations played Christmas music – much of it Christmas carols with explicitly religious lyrics – from the day after Thanksgiving in late November until the day after Christmas (and sometimes through the 12 days). Retail employees did not have to be told to wish their customers “Merry Christmas” – it was a universal greeting during the holiday season.
That all started to change towards the end of the millennium, and the change accelerated in the first decade of the current century.
The slogan “The War on Christmas” was formalized in 1999 by Peter Brimelow, founder of VDARE, coining the term in 1999 and framing “Happy Holidays” and other non-Christian messaging as anti-American. But the conflict started much earlier.
While in 1984, the Supreme Court (in Lynch v. Donnelly) ruled that religious displays were OK in the public square, as long as they were balanced with secular ones and served broad public interest in celebrating a major holiday, it was only a temporary – if significant – stay in a broad strategic assault on the holiday as traditionally celebrated. Aided by the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union), which was increasingly tilting in the “progressive” direction at the time, legal challenges to Christmas and holiday religious displays surged starting in the 1980s.
That process accelerated in the first decade and a half of the current century. The ACLU and the Freedom from Religion Foundation began suing or threatening to sue small towns and school districts for using the word "Christmas" or even allowing choirs to sing carols in public schools. This effectively removed Christian symbols from all government-affiliated displays.
The broader effect of the legal storm was to de-Christianize Christmas, as governments, businesses, and the media, to prevent legal challenges and bad publicity, began to avoid explicitly Christian images and messaging in favor of secular ones.
The process quickly became evident in the commercial sphere. In the early 2000s, Walmart, Target, Macy’s, Sears, and Lowe’s (all major US retail chains) encouraged their employees to use “Happy Holidays” or other secular greetings instead of “Merry Christmas.” Signage, display symbols, and even some merchandise explicitly associated with baby Jesus’s birth were replaced with secular items like Rudolf the Reindeer and his entourage, drums, toy soldiers, and nutcrackers, and with totally unrelated items covered in a red-green-and-gold color scheme usually associated with the secular aspects of the holiday.
At work, decorating one’s office or cubicle with religious symbols, exchanging Christmas presents, and wishing coworkers “Merry Christmas” went from being routine, even expected, behavior to something that may be labeled “CLM” – a career-limiting move. As Eid, Diwali, and Kwanzaa entered the lexicon, and as their corresponding displays were seen as a sign of open-mindedness and progress, Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, and Epiphany were seen as throwbacks to the bad old times, before suffrage, emancipation, and enlightenment.
The worst part was, people started censoring themselves. Convinced that secularized holiday was the prevailing Zeitgeist, seeing others punished (by disciplinary actions, opprobrium, or ostracism) for overt Christian displays or greetings, the character of the holiday was directly and greatly affected, transitioning it towards being a strictly secular holiday, centered on exchanging gifts, decorating with certain colors, and expressing generally affable sentiments.
In a strict sense, it was not a “war.” It most resembled what is called “asymmetric warfare” played out in the media and information sphere. It was waged by a small cadre of passionate, dedicated partisans using litigation, disinformation campaigns, propaganda, and social media manipulation to amplify their message and create the perception, and then the reality, of societal change. The accelerants were sympathetic judges, concordant reporters, anchors, and editors, supportive entertainment complex executives, and like-minded or simply opportunistic influencers. The enablers were regular people who changed their behavior without necessarily changing their opinions or preferences.
Nobody knows where this downhill slide would have ended – perhaps with the official designation of a late December date or period as a “Winter Holiday,” with an outright ban on Christian imagery in any public setting; the original advocates certainly made no secret of their ultimate aim to completely de-Christianize Christmas.
Luckily, some public figures pushed back, just as loudly as the activists. One of the most effective leaders of the resistance was Bill O’Reilly, the host of “The O’Reilly Factor,” the top-rated cable news show that dominated TV ratings for an impressive 21 years, from 1996 to 2017. He framed the secularization of Christmas as part of the overall cultural war being waged in America in December 2004, airing a segment on his show titled “Christmas Under Siege.” He talked about pressure groups, naming names, exposing methods, and claiming a coordinated campaign to minimize or erase Christmas and make public references to Christianity taboo.
His resistance campaign received broad coverage and engendered widespread support from people who believed they were the only ones seeking to preserve the holiday's sacred nature. Other influencers, mainly but not exclusively on the Right, joined the fray, taking the message to broader audiences.
Only two years later, after boycott threats and media pressure, many targeted retailers reintroduced “Christmas” into their ads and greetings. O’Reilly continued monitoring the situation until he departed from his show in 2017, airing follow-up segments each holiday season and exposing new initiatives to secularize Christmas.
The activists moved on to the new cause de jour, and Christmas appears to be safe – for now.
The end result was a partial rollback of the progressive policies and establishment of a new equilibrium. The problem is, the new balance is now much closer to the progressive vision of where the country ought to be than before. And because it was only one skirmish in the greater culture war, I fear that the next assault will move the action farther down the field.
So what advice can I offer you?
One is that focusing on a profusion of Christmas-related merchandise, displays, and signage as proof that Christmas is alive and well is deeply mistaken. I suggest you visit Japan at the end of December. You will see Tokyo bedecked in green and red lights, with decorations depicting secular Christmas items (pine trees, sleighs, etc.), and gripped by a present-exchange frenzy. Are they celebrating the birth of baby Jesus? Of course not! It is a perfect example of Christmas completely and totally without any reference to Christ.
Two is that it is necessary, it is indeed imperative, to have loud voices, such as yours, capable of cutting through the dominant discourse, counteracting the loud voices initiating the conflict on the other side, which, left unanswered, would transform the society without military force or physical coercion, through legal, legislative, and cultural pressures.
Three is that the drive to transform the country – in whatever direction – never goes away. It may be quiescent for a while, or preoccupied with other topics, but sooner or later the few loud voices will rise again and, left unimpeded, will finish the job – just like they did in Weimar Germany in the past, or in the modern-day Russia, China, or Turkey.
Hey, Jonathan. I was not aware of all of that, no, but I am aware that beliefs that there is a war on Christmas has been borrowed from the US and with very little justification.
People here claiming that Christmas is being erased are not typically claiming that the Christian nature of it is. Most of them are not believing Christians. While the census shows that half of us are Christian, more indepth surveys show that only 52% of self-identified Christians believe in God. This is compatible with other surveys asking specifically about belief in God and finding it to be around 27%.
The objection is coming from cultural conservatives who are not worried about atheists trying to push Christianity out of public spaces. Nor have any atheists tried to do this. Most of them are atheists and absolutely fine with Christmas being celebrated as a cultural tradition rather than a religious holiday. (Your leftists are more likely to say that Christianity is essential to being American than our conservatives are to say that Christianity is essential to being British) Their fear is an entirely unevidenced claim that Muslims object to the celebration of Christmas. They don’t. The overwhelming Muslim position is that Christianity is to be respected because the Abrahamic religions are to be respected and the more worrying thing is that Muslim MPs try to use this to try to make blasphemy laws. No desecration of Christian, Muslim or Jewish texts etc. More conservative Muslims will say that Muslims should not celebrate Christmas but most do and often as a religious holiday. They revere Jesus and his birth is part of their faith tradition too. It is Easter that goes against it.
The fear is also that leftists are pushing the suppression of Christmas due to beliefs about multiculturalism and inclusion, but this is not happening either. Not at all. They could justly complain that leftists make more of a fuss about other religious holidays than Christian ones, but I’d suggest this is still within freedom of expression as long as they don’t try to stifle Christianity. They don’t seem to be doing that. I don’t think they will. Christianity is not really associated with conservatism here and the majority of regular churchgoers are black.
That said, we are seeing a burst of anti-immigration, anti-Islam activists well into the right suddenly convert to Christianity, but most of them say they don’t actually believe in it. The mainstream churches are opposed to them because they have been preaching that welcoming migrants is Christian.
From a liberal perspective, I have most often had to defend Christians when they have run afoul of LGBT activism and faced disciplinary action for expressing the view that homosexuality is a sin on their own social media accounts.
Also from a liberal perspective, I have long been campaigning to remove bishops from unelected positions in government and Christian worship from schools.
Aside from government and education, I am absolutely in support of Christians being able to express their beliefs everywhere and fully and will oppose any attempts to ‘secularise’ public spaces as we see in America. Christians just have to accept that other religions can be publicly expressed and displayed too. I actually get on pretty well with our Anglican Christians whose values are progressive but in a humanist way and economics are left-wing and generally OK with our ‘black churches’ which are the only ones still growing because they don’t generally make trouble and are also compatible with liberal freedoms, although they are typically socially conservative and there have been some problems with beliefs in possession and witchcraft which has led to the deaths of children. Not a fan of the new sects of right-wing nationalist Christianity but they remain small. Jews cause no problems. Hindus and Sikhs cause no problems. A significant percentage of Muslims cause considerable problems and we must stop underestimating this and take it very seriously without demonising all Muslims because a greater proportion present no problem at all. The threats from that quarter are also varied and I fear that the focus on radical views from a really small minority gets all the attention while the problem of a substantial proportion having very socially conservative views about gender roles and sexuality and fundamentally not supporting freedom of belief and organising politically and well while being successful professional people and good and conscientious neighbours gets sidelined.
I can give you an intuitive sense of the problem with this reality from my birthplace, Walthamstow, now heavily Muslim. If I were to faint in the marketplace there, I would be in much better hands than most parts of London. People would rush to my assistance and help me up. A lady would take me into her home and make me tea. It would be everybody’s concern about how I would get home and if I could not afford a cab, somebody would be found to drive me. Extremely neighbourly and community-minded people. If I were to walk into the marketplace wearing a tee-shirt with a cartoon of the prophet Muhammad, I would be beaten to a pulp, stabbed or killed.
We need to address this problem seriously and cultural conservatives going on about the cancellation of Christmas are getting in the way.
Helen - thank you so much for such an extensive comment!
It is notable to me that British conservatives are not likely to say that Christianity is essential to being British. I'd ask, what, then, are they trying to conserve? It seems that some see fundamentalist Christianity as a bulwark against fundamentalist Islam. That is indeed an illiberal posture.
I don't live in Britain, so I don't have first-hand experience with how British Muslims regard Christmas. I asked Grok for public opinion data on the subject, and it firmly supports your statements:
"Yes, there have been several public opinion polls conducted on British Muslims' attitudes toward Christmas, primarily through broader surveys on integration, British identity, and cultural participation. These polls, often commissioned by think tanks, media outlets, or research firms like Ipsos MORI and Policy Exchange, consistently show that a significant majority of British Muslims engage positively with Christmas as a cultural tradition—viewing it as a secular holiday rather than a religious one—while maintaining their Islamic faith. There is no evidence from these polls of widespread opposition or desire to "cancel" Christmas; instead, they highlight high levels of participation in festive customs."
That is very gratifying. Thank you for informing me of this.
On the other hand, the BBC article you referenced left me baffled. "How does it challenge what some see as misrepresentations of Christian values, while welcoming potential new churchgoers?"
"Mr Jones has mainly been listening to Gareth and exploring what he means"???
You are the pastor! Your job is to welcome all who knock on the church door, and then to teach them the Gospel! It's not a "challenge" - it's an opportunity!
"It's a "difficult road for the Church to walk"???
The difficult road is one on which you walk alone! Which, as I understand it, the Church of England has been following more and more.
I was very interested in the last part of your response. You say, "the focus on radical views from a really small minority gets all the attention while the problem of a substantial proportion having very socially conservative views about gender roles and sexuality and fundamentally not supporting freedom of belief and organising politically and well while being successful professional people and good and conscientious neighbours gets sidelined." That is a very courageous stance. Additionally, I think the danger of the vocal extremist minority overwhelming the silent majority in that community is also most apparent.
I fully understand your illustration; it is consistent with my experience with societies intent on a single vision of reality, "one truth," and completely hostile to any other interpretation. Socially, they are most hospitable and helpful; politically (or religiously), they are murderous.
Do you have any ideas for solving this problem? You diagnose it brilliantly, but are you aware of any solutions that you'd support? Perhaps a subject for a future post...
“It is notable to me that British conservatives are not likely to say that Christianity is essential to being British. I'd ask, what, then, are they trying to conserve?”
Britishness. I know this is unsatisfactory but what people get patriotic over is a very multifaceted thing that takes in a lot of history, culture, figures , manners, customs and combines them with conservative values of personal responsibility, family, community, caution, dignity, restraint. It can include Christianity as a cultural institution and aesthetic but seldom as a strongly held religion. It’s to do with the ‘National Character: From the anthropologist, Kate Fox’s book, Watching the English,
“I think that the former Archbishop’s notion of a prevailing ‘tacit atheism’ among the English is fairly accurate. If we were real atheists, he and his Church would have something to get their teeth into, someone to argue with. As it is, we just don’t care enough.118. We are not only indifferent but, worse (from the Church’s point of view), we are politely indifferent, tolerantly indifferent, benignly indifferent. We have no actual objection to God. If pushed, we even accept that He might exist – or that Something might exist, and we might as well call it God, if only for the sake of peace and quiet. God is all very well, in His place, which is in a church. When we are in His house – at weddings and funerals – we make all the right polite noises, as one does in people’s houses, although we find the earnestness of it all faintly ridiculous and a bit uncomfortable. Otherwise, He impinges very little on our lives or thoughts. Other people are very welcome to worship Him if they choose – it’s a free country – but this is a private matter, and they should keep it to themselves and not bore or embarrass the rest of us by making an unnecessary fuss about it. (There is nothing the English hate more than a fuss.)
In many other countries – America, for example – politicians and other prominent public figures feel obliged to demonstrate their devoutness and invoke their deity at every opportunity. Here, they must do the exact opposite. Even to mention one’s faith would be very bad form. The former prime minister Tony Blair was known to be a devout Christian, an affliction we tolerated in our usual grudgingly courteous fashion, but only because he had the good sense to keep extremely quiet about it – and was apparently under strict instructions from his spin-doctors never to use ‘the G-word’. (His press spokesman once famously told reporters, ‘We don’t do God.’) Despite this precaution, he was caricatured in Private Eye as a pompous and self-righteous country vicar, and his speeches and pronouncements were scrutinised for any sign of unseemly piety, the slightest hint of which was immediately pounced upon and ridiculed. (Here it is worth reminding ourselves again that satire is what the English have instead of revolutions and uprisings.) When it was alleged that Mr Blair and President Bush had actually prayed together during his visit to the White House, the media had a field day, and Blair is still denying that any such inappropriate act took place.
Our benign indifference remains benign only so long as the religious, of any persuasion, stay in their place and refrain from discomforting the non-practising, spiritually neutral majority with embarrassing or tedious displays of religious zeal. And any use of the G-word, unless obviously ironic or just a figure of speech (God forbid, God knows, Godforsaken, etc.) counts as an improper display. Earnestness of any kind makes us squirm; religious earnestness makes us deeply suspicious and decidedly twitchy.”
To address problems related to Islam, I think we need to have a few changes. No publicly funded faith schools, for example, and active avoidance of the development of wholly Muslim communities so that people mix. Have a strong rule of religious freedom that clearly includes the right to criticise Islam and expectations that people moving here commit to respecting that.
Helen - sorry for a tardy response, prepping for and celebrating Thanksgiving with the family.
I see you used the expression "it's free country" - I wrote in my latest post (Is America Still Exceptional?) about how I used to hear it all the time, and now I hardly hear it at all in "the land of the free" ...
Thank you for explaining how the English regard their religion. I am, frankly, puzzled. My understanding was that the English were historically a deeply religious people. When did that change so drastically? Why is it necessary to ridicule piety? (And I am not expecting a full answer; if you have a reference for me to examine, that would be great, or feel free to treat these as rhetorical questions - I'm planning to visit England again next year, so I'll plan on preparing a better cultural understanding for that trip.)
I agree with your prescription for no publicly funded faith schools. Hoping for mixed communities, though, strikes me as slightly naive. First- and second-generation immigrants, even from culturally similar countries, tend to cluster together (viz., "Little Italy" and "Irish Riviera" in NY, or "Irish Belt" in Boston); "actively avoiding" that may not be possible in a free country. And culturally distinct immigrants may perpetuate their communities for generations (viz. Chinatowns in most Western countries).
A "strong rule" that clearly includes the right to criticise Islam may not be sufficient - observe the trouble the French have had with actual laws prohibiting hijabs in schools and burqas in public spaces. And how do you enforce an "expectation"?
You may still be at the stage in England when the problem is not even acknowledged; moving from there to actions that will enforce religious freedom and freedom of speech is going to be a harder lift than "a few changes," I am afraid.
Again, thank you for engaging so deeply! This subscriber certainly appreciates it greatly.
I don’t think we’ve ever been a particularly deeply religious country, comparatively speaking. Always rather pragmatic. And the turn to regarding religion as something a bit embarrassing and best considered as a private thing and not brought into conversation has been going on since at least the beginning of the 20th century. If you read people like Enid Blyton and Agatha Christie, you see religion as an understated, private thing and overt statements of it as embarrassing. I worked with elderly people from the age of 17 and some of them were very elderly indeed. The oldest was born in 1878. That generation - what was called the ‘fin de siécle’ saw a turn towards both cynical skeptical and spiritualism and ushered in the modernist period which was very cynical about religion. It’s part of the British dislike of overt emotional expression and anything that could be considered ‘making a fuss’ generally. We’re just a very understated, private people and we dislike zealotry. Someone telling you about their religious beliefs is a bit like telling you about their sex life.
I also think some quite radical changes will need to be made to enable religious freedom and cultural cohesion and address problems related to Islam. I just don’t know what they are. I can only suggest a few obvious things we are not doing. I think the British take the problem much more seriously than Americans and have done for some time. This is supported by polling which directly compares British right-wingers with Trump supporters. The American right remains much more open to racial and religious diversity than the British right and this makes sense as you have always been much more mixed.
Well, I guess I have to thank you for correcting my mistaken impression of England as a deeply religious country (if not currently, then fairly recently).
Another impression I had was that the British have NOT taken the problem of assimilation seriously, at least until the grooming scandal broke into prominence very recently. I did a semi-deep dive on asylum-seekers coming in by boat, and found out that British embassies do not accept asylum applications - one has to be on British soil in order to apply for asylum! So basically, the government is making asylum very attractive (with housing, stipends, medical services, etc.) and then forcing (figuratively) folks seeking "asylum" to come into the country by whatever means they have available to them to apply for it. Insane!
Finally, I would not have imagined British right-wingers to have a more stringent attitude towards cultural cohesion than American ones. But I looked into it - and, of course, you're right!
Thank you for educating me in these important matters!
P.S. Unfortunately, I can't read the FT article you referenced (they want $75 per month?!?!?)
I always thought you Brits said “Happy Christmas!” Did I just make that up?
We do indeed say that. The bland and generic "Happy Holidays" is an American cultural import. Integrated ethnic and religious minorities here don't have a problem with other people celebrating Christmas, and just get on with their own festivals. Indoctrinated white people object to Christmas 'on behalf of' minorities.
The 'evergreen' tree is not the only product in Tesco which has had the word 'Christmas' removed from packaging. See also the 'tinsel tree' for example. This is not a mistake or oversight, it is a branding strategy. Tesco's founder, the late Jack Cohen, was too smart to have done something so blatant, despite not being a Christian.
As for the Church of England being a cultural institution, it may behave as if it was one, but we don't have separation of church and state. Unlike the USA, Christianity is a formal part of our political system, whether liberal atheists like that or not. This influence is not merely restricted to bishops in the House of Lords or school prayers; it is deeply embedded in our establishment.
Don’t be daft. It’d be a crap strategy to rename a couple of things but still put them in Christmas boxes with Christmas written on them and go nuts on Christmas branding.
These Tesco products don't have Christmas written on the packaging; that's my point.
Of course Tesco has a Christmas TV advertising campaign, because people buy more at this time of year, but this year's iteration is particularly bad. Two grown men argue over a drawing of a biscuit, reminding us that Christmas is the time to bring up old family resentments and jealous disputes from childhood.
Together with the multicultural advertising at my local Tesco (featuring ‘communities’ plural), it is a reasonable conclusion, not a daft one, that branding staff at the company are pursuing a woke political agenda. I would fully agree that it is a crap strategy, but corporations do make mistakes.
By comparison, the Christmas TV campaigns for its competitors Sainsbury's and Morrisons are about love, food and family; not explicitly religious, but far more positive about the second-most important Christian festival of the year.
I think it is a dumb call by Tesco, but I fundamentally agree with your point of view. This is, as the movie “White Chicks” would put it, a “bitch fit”. I was there, 2,000 years ago in the States when the “war on Christmas” happened. Broken gingerbread men littered the streets. Decorative Santa’s and elves were impaled on sharpened candy canes. Banners of “Merry Christmas” fell from Targets ceilings like Jurassic park. In frankness it was annoying on both counts.
I sympathized with the Christmas folk, me being one of them, and was annoyed by the pre social justice politically correct movement, but the outrage seemed too much. They won though, as shrill as many were. People need to be able to say piss off, I think that’s fair. There is no chance Tesco would sell “holiday candelabras” or whatever an equivalent Islamic symbol would be. If the Christmas crowd overdo it, it just continues the cycle of woke type 1 and 2.
Have you seen Tesco's new TV campaign about family feuds at Christmas? Worst seasonal advertising ever. Of course, the creative industry thinks it's stunning and brave.
https://www.creativereview.co.uk/tesco-christmas-2025-campaign-bbh-london/
Helen - I turned my prior reply into a post, just released today:
https://open.substack.com/pub/jonathanblake/p/is-the-war-on-christmas-over
Interesting. I think you might have had an overcorrection on the predominance of Christianity with the intention of being more inclusive combined with a constitutional expectation of secularism while we do not have that. We have a Christian state without very many Christians. Because we don’t have many Christians and those we do have tend to regard it as a private matter, there is a cultural tendency to see it as bullying to make fun of Christianity. Going after low-hanging fruit. Because the majority don’t believe in God and speaking publicly of god-belief is regarded as over-sharing and a bit embarrassing, the expectation is to respect religious beliefs but mostly leave them alone. This attitude changes if Christians start trying to claim more of a privileged status for their religion than it already has or impose it on other people. Then the reaction is typically “Keep your supernatural beliefs to yourself and stop being weird if you want us to be tolerant of them.” Because Christianity really does have a privileged status written into our constitution and manifesting in governmental structure and education, people more generally are not inclined to give it any more power than it already has but because Christians generally don’t impose or even display their beliefs, few people see it as urgent to change the constitution. I am one of a few who does. Now, with rising anxiety about Islam, more people are being drawn to Christianity as a counterview, but really as a cultural identification and not as a belief in God. So, they’re not being drawn to the Church of England which is the one which is our state religion but to fringe churches explicitly opposed to immigration or to dogmatic forms of Catholicism. It’s a worry. The alleged War on Christmas here does not actually exist because no-one at all is trying to stop anyone celebrating Christmas explicitly. That rhetoric has been taken from America because over there, some people have.
Thank you! Yes, the situations in our respective countries are very different.
And while the concept of cultural export is flattering, the bad flows out with the good, unfortunately.
Helen – as a passionate advocate of Liberalism who lived through the American version of the War on Christmas - perhaps I can offer a perspective you may not be aware of.
The history of the American relationship with the Christmas holiday is not simple. The Puritans who originally settled in Massachusetts Bay banned Christmas celebrations. Pilgrims in Plymouth simply ignored it, viewing it as Pagan. After the War of Independence, Christmas was seen as a “British holiday” and was generally out of favor until Dickens’s A Christmas Carol was published in 1843; it broadly defined the images and traditions of the holiday as practiced in the United States.
The gradual acceptance and the eventual ubiquity of the celebration of the birth of Jesus prompted its declaration as a federal holiday in 1870, initially simply listing the date as one of four “holidays” for federal employees in the District of Columbia (the home of the nation’s capital). It was expanded to all federal employees in 1885, with Congress designating it specifically as “Christmas Day, December 25.” All the States followed suit by 1890, and Christmas has been universally observed by all state governments, with state offices closed on that date, since then.
By the mid-1900s, Christmas was fully institutionalized as a paid holiday in corporate America as well. Except for the most essential services, the overwhelming majority of large US corporations recognized Christmas as a holiday and gave non-essential employees the day off. Not observing Christmas as a holiday was virtually unheard of. Christmas was a big deal, and very big for business: Christmas-related retail activity accounted for as much as a quarter of the total annual revenue in that segment.
And it was explicitly recognized as the commemoration of the birth of Christ, named Christmas, not a generic seasonal holiday. Employees were paid Christmas bonuses; companies held Christmas parties; Christmas trees and ornaments were on sale; all localities, from the smallest to the largest, were decked out in Christmas lights and decorations: trumpeting angels, stars of Bethlehem, etc., etc. Radio stations played Christmas music – much of it Christmas carols with explicitly religious lyrics – from the day after Thanksgiving in late November until the day after Christmas (and sometimes through the 12 days). Retail employees did not have to be told to wish their customers “Merry Christmas” – it was a universal greeting during the holiday season.
That all started to change towards the end of the millennium, and the change accelerated in the first decade of the current century.
The slogan “The War on Christmas” was formalized in 1999 by Peter Brimelow, founder of VDARE, coining the term in 1999 and framing “Happy Holidays” and other non-Christian messaging as anti-American. But the conflict started much earlier.
While in 1984, the Supreme Court (in Lynch v. Donnelly) ruled that religious displays were OK in the public square, as long as they were balanced with secular ones and served broad public interest in celebrating a major holiday, it was only a temporary – if significant – stay in a broad strategic assault on the holiday as traditionally celebrated. Aided by the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union), which was increasingly tilting in the “progressive” direction at the time, legal challenges to Christmas and holiday religious displays surged starting in the 1980s.
That process accelerated in the first decade and a half of the current century. The ACLU and the Freedom from Religion Foundation began suing or threatening to sue small towns and school districts for using the word "Christmas" or even allowing choirs to sing carols in public schools. This effectively removed Christian symbols from all government-affiliated displays.
The broader effect of the legal storm was to de-Christianize Christmas, as governments, businesses, and the media, to prevent legal challenges and bad publicity, began to avoid explicitly Christian images and messaging in favor of secular ones.
The process quickly became evident in the commercial sphere. In the early 2000s, Walmart, Target, Macy’s, Sears, and Lowe’s (all major US retail chains) encouraged their employees to use “Happy Holidays” or other secular greetings instead of “Merry Christmas.” Signage, display symbols, and even some merchandise explicitly associated with baby Jesus’s birth were replaced with secular items like Rudolf the Reindeer and his entourage, drums, toy soldiers, and nutcrackers, and with totally unrelated items covered in a red-green-and-gold color scheme usually associated with the secular aspects of the holiday.
At work, decorating one’s office or cubicle with religious symbols, exchanging Christmas presents, and wishing coworkers “Merry Christmas” went from being routine, even expected, behavior to something that may be labeled “CLM” – a career-limiting move. As Eid, Diwali, and Kwanzaa entered the lexicon, and as their corresponding displays were seen as a sign of open-mindedness and progress, Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, and Epiphany were seen as throwbacks to the bad old times, before suffrage, emancipation, and enlightenment.
The worst part was, people started censoring themselves. Convinced that secularized holiday was the prevailing Zeitgeist, seeing others punished (by disciplinary actions, opprobrium, or ostracism) for overt Christian displays or greetings, the character of the holiday was directly and greatly affected, transitioning it towards being a strictly secular holiday, centered on exchanging gifts, decorating with certain colors, and expressing generally affable sentiments.
In a strict sense, it was not a “war.” It most resembled what is called “asymmetric warfare” played out in the media and information sphere. It was waged by a small cadre of passionate, dedicated partisans using litigation, disinformation campaigns, propaganda, and social media manipulation to amplify their message and create the perception, and then the reality, of societal change. The accelerants were sympathetic judges, concordant reporters, anchors, and editors, supportive entertainment complex executives, and like-minded or simply opportunistic influencers. The enablers were regular people who changed their behavior without necessarily changing their opinions or preferences.
Nobody knows where this downhill slide would have ended – perhaps with the official designation of a late December date or period as a “Winter Holiday,” with an outright ban on Christian imagery in any public setting; the original advocates certainly made no secret of their ultimate aim to completely de-Christianize Christmas.
Luckily, some public figures pushed back, just as loudly as the activists. One of the most effective leaders of the resistance was Bill O’Reilly, the host of “The O’Reilly Factor,” the top-rated cable news show that dominated TV ratings for an impressive 21 years, from 1996 to 2017. He framed the secularization of Christmas as part of the overall cultural war being waged in America in December 2004, airing a segment on his show titled “Christmas Under Siege.” He talked about pressure groups, naming names, exposing methods, and claiming a coordinated campaign to minimize or erase Christmas and make public references to Christianity taboo.
His resistance campaign received broad coverage and engendered widespread support from people who believed they were the only ones seeking to preserve the holiday's sacred nature. Other influencers, mainly but not exclusively on the Right, joined the fray, taking the message to broader audiences.
Only two years later, after boycott threats and media pressure, many targeted retailers reintroduced “Christmas” into their ads and greetings. O’Reilly continued monitoring the situation until he departed from his show in 2017, airing follow-up segments each holiday season and exposing new initiatives to secularize Christmas.
The activists moved on to the new cause de jour, and Christmas appears to be safe – for now.
The end result was a partial rollback of the progressive policies and establishment of a new equilibrium. The problem is, the new balance is now much closer to the progressive vision of where the country ought to be than before. And because it was only one skirmish in the greater culture war, I fear that the next assault will move the action farther down the field.
So what advice can I offer you?
One is that focusing on a profusion of Christmas-related merchandise, displays, and signage as proof that Christmas is alive and well is deeply mistaken. I suggest you visit Japan at the end of December. You will see Tokyo bedecked in green and red lights, with decorations depicting secular Christmas items (pine trees, sleighs, etc.), and gripped by a present-exchange frenzy. Are they celebrating the birth of baby Jesus? Of course not! It is a perfect example of Christmas completely and totally without any reference to Christ.
Two is that it is necessary, it is indeed imperative, to have loud voices, such as yours, capable of cutting through the dominant discourse, counteracting the loud voices initiating the conflict on the other side, which, left unanswered, would transform the society without military force or physical coercion, through legal, legislative, and cultural pressures.
Three is that the drive to transform the country – in whatever direction – never goes away. It may be quiescent for a while, or preoccupied with other topics, but sooner or later the few loud voices will rise again and, left unimpeded, will finish the job – just like they did in Weimar Germany in the past, or in the modern-day Russia, China, or Turkey.
Hey, Jonathan. I was not aware of all of that, no, but I am aware that beliefs that there is a war on Christmas has been borrowed from the US and with very little justification.
People here claiming that Christmas is being erased are not typically claiming that the Christian nature of it is. Most of them are not believing Christians. While the census shows that half of us are Christian, more indepth surveys show that only 52% of self-identified Christians believe in God. This is compatible with other surveys asking specifically about belief in God and finding it to be around 27%.
The objection is coming from cultural conservatives who are not worried about atheists trying to push Christianity out of public spaces. Nor have any atheists tried to do this. Most of them are atheists and absolutely fine with Christmas being celebrated as a cultural tradition rather than a religious holiday. (Your leftists are more likely to say that Christianity is essential to being American than our conservatives are to say that Christianity is essential to being British) Their fear is an entirely unevidenced claim that Muslims object to the celebration of Christmas. They don’t. The overwhelming Muslim position is that Christianity is to be respected because the Abrahamic religions are to be respected and the more worrying thing is that Muslim MPs try to use this to try to make blasphemy laws. No desecration of Christian, Muslim or Jewish texts etc. More conservative Muslims will say that Muslims should not celebrate Christmas but most do and often as a religious holiday. They revere Jesus and his birth is part of their faith tradition too. It is Easter that goes against it.
The fear is also that leftists are pushing the suppression of Christmas due to beliefs about multiculturalism and inclusion, but this is not happening either. Not at all. They could justly complain that leftists make more of a fuss about other religious holidays than Christian ones, but I’d suggest this is still within freedom of expression as long as they don’t try to stifle Christianity. They don’t seem to be doing that. I don’t think they will. Christianity is not really associated with conservatism here and the majority of regular churchgoers are black.
That said, we are seeing a burst of anti-immigration, anti-Islam activists well into the right suddenly convert to Christianity, but most of them say they don’t actually believe in it. The mainstream churches are opposed to them because they have been preaching that welcoming migrants is Christian.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy4p42kydx9o
From a liberal perspective, I have most often had to defend Christians when they have run afoul of LGBT activism and faced disciplinary action for expressing the view that homosexuality is a sin on their own social media accounts.
https://www.hpluckrose.com/p/homosexuality-and-sin
Also from a liberal perspective, I have long been campaigning to remove bishops from unelected positions in government and Christian worship from schools.
Aside from government and education, I am absolutely in support of Christians being able to express their beliefs everywhere and fully and will oppose any attempts to ‘secularise’ public spaces as we see in America. Christians just have to accept that other religions can be publicly expressed and displayed too. I actually get on pretty well with our Anglican Christians whose values are progressive but in a humanist way and economics are left-wing and generally OK with our ‘black churches’ which are the only ones still growing because they don’t generally make trouble and are also compatible with liberal freedoms, although they are typically socially conservative and there have been some problems with beliefs in possession and witchcraft which has led to the deaths of children. Not a fan of the new sects of right-wing nationalist Christianity but they remain small. Jews cause no problems. Hindus and Sikhs cause no problems. A significant percentage of Muslims cause considerable problems and we must stop underestimating this and take it very seriously without demonising all Muslims because a greater proportion present no problem at all. The threats from that quarter are also varied and I fear that the focus on radical views from a really small minority gets all the attention while the problem of a substantial proportion having very socially conservative views about gender roles and sexuality and fundamentally not supporting freedom of belief and organising politically and well while being successful professional people and good and conscientious neighbours gets sidelined.
I can give you an intuitive sense of the problem with this reality from my birthplace, Walthamstow, now heavily Muslim. If I were to faint in the marketplace there, I would be in much better hands than most parts of London. People would rush to my assistance and help me up. A lady would take me into her home and make me tea. It would be everybody’s concern about how I would get home and if I could not afford a cab, somebody would be found to drive me. Extremely neighbourly and community-minded people. If I were to walk into the marketplace wearing a tee-shirt with a cartoon of the prophet Muhammad, I would be beaten to a pulp, stabbed or killed.
We need to address this problem seriously and cultural conservatives going on about the cancellation of Christmas are getting in the way.
Helen - thank you so much for such an extensive comment!
It is notable to me that British conservatives are not likely to say that Christianity is essential to being British. I'd ask, what, then, are they trying to conserve? It seems that some see fundamentalist Christianity as a bulwark against fundamentalist Islam. That is indeed an illiberal posture.
I don't live in Britain, so I don't have first-hand experience with how British Muslims regard Christmas. I asked Grok for public opinion data on the subject, and it firmly supports your statements:
"Yes, there have been several public opinion polls conducted on British Muslims' attitudes toward Christmas, primarily through broader surveys on integration, British identity, and cultural participation. These polls, often commissioned by think tanks, media outlets, or research firms like Ipsos MORI and Policy Exchange, consistently show that a significant majority of British Muslims engage positively with Christmas as a cultural tradition—viewing it as a secular holiday rather than a religious one—while maintaining their Islamic faith. There is no evidence from these polls of widespread opposition or desire to "cancel" Christmas; instead, they highlight high levels of participation in festive customs."
That is very gratifying. Thank you for informing me of this.
On the other hand, the BBC article you referenced left me baffled. "How does it challenge what some see as misrepresentations of Christian values, while welcoming potential new churchgoers?"
"Mr Jones has mainly been listening to Gareth and exploring what he means"???
You are the pastor! Your job is to welcome all who knock on the church door, and then to teach them the Gospel! It's not a "challenge" - it's an opportunity!
"It's a "difficult road for the Church to walk"???
The difficult road is one on which you walk alone! Which, as I understand it, the Church of England has been following more and more.
I was very interested in the last part of your response. You say, "the focus on radical views from a really small minority gets all the attention while the problem of a substantial proportion having very socially conservative views about gender roles and sexuality and fundamentally not supporting freedom of belief and organising politically and well while being successful professional people and good and conscientious neighbours gets sidelined." That is a very courageous stance. Additionally, I think the danger of the vocal extremist minority overwhelming the silent majority in that community is also most apparent.
I fully understand your illustration; it is consistent with my experience with societies intent on a single vision of reality, "one truth," and completely hostile to any other interpretation. Socially, they are most hospitable and helpful; politically (or religiously), they are murderous.
Do you have any ideas for solving this problem? You diagnose it brilliantly, but are you aware of any solutions that you'd support? Perhaps a subject for a future post...
“It is notable to me that British conservatives are not likely to say that Christianity is essential to being British. I'd ask, what, then, are they trying to conserve?”
Britishness. I know this is unsatisfactory but what people get patriotic over is a very multifaceted thing that takes in a lot of history, culture, figures , manners, customs and combines them with conservative values of personal responsibility, family, community, caution, dignity, restraint. It can include Christianity as a cultural institution and aesthetic but seldom as a strongly held religion. It’s to do with the ‘National Character: From the anthropologist, Kate Fox’s book, Watching the English,
“I think that the former Archbishop’s notion of a prevailing ‘tacit atheism’ among the English is fairly accurate. If we were real atheists, he and his Church would have something to get their teeth into, someone to argue with. As it is, we just don’t care enough.118. We are not only indifferent but, worse (from the Church’s point of view), we are politely indifferent, tolerantly indifferent, benignly indifferent. We have no actual objection to God. If pushed, we even accept that He might exist – or that Something might exist, and we might as well call it God, if only for the sake of peace and quiet. God is all very well, in His place, which is in a church. When we are in His house – at weddings and funerals – we make all the right polite noises, as one does in people’s houses, although we find the earnestness of it all faintly ridiculous and a bit uncomfortable. Otherwise, He impinges very little on our lives or thoughts. Other people are very welcome to worship Him if they choose – it’s a free country – but this is a private matter, and they should keep it to themselves and not bore or embarrass the rest of us by making an unnecessary fuss about it. (There is nothing the English hate more than a fuss.)
In many other countries – America, for example – politicians and other prominent public figures feel obliged to demonstrate their devoutness and invoke their deity at every opportunity. Here, they must do the exact opposite. Even to mention one’s faith would be very bad form. The former prime minister Tony Blair was known to be a devout Christian, an affliction we tolerated in our usual grudgingly courteous fashion, but only because he had the good sense to keep extremely quiet about it – and was apparently under strict instructions from his spin-doctors never to use ‘the G-word’. (His press spokesman once famously told reporters, ‘We don’t do God.’) Despite this precaution, he was caricatured in Private Eye as a pompous and self-righteous country vicar, and his speeches and pronouncements were scrutinised for any sign of unseemly piety, the slightest hint of which was immediately pounced upon and ridiculed. (Here it is worth reminding ourselves again that satire is what the English have instead of revolutions and uprisings.) When it was alleged that Mr Blair and President Bush had actually prayed together during his visit to the White House, the media had a field day, and Blair is still denying that any such inappropriate act took place.
Our benign indifference remains benign only so long as the religious, of any persuasion, stay in their place and refrain from discomforting the non-practising, spiritually neutral majority with embarrassing or tedious displays of religious zeal. And any use of the G-word, unless obviously ironic or just a figure of speech (God forbid, God knows, Godforsaken, etc.) counts as an improper display. Earnestness of any kind makes us squirm; religious earnestness makes us deeply suspicious and decidedly twitchy.”
To address problems related to Islam, I think we need to have a few changes. No publicly funded faith schools, for example, and active avoidance of the development of wholly Muslim communities so that people mix. Have a strong rule of religious freedom that clearly includes the right to criticise Islam and expectations that people moving here commit to respecting that.
Helen - sorry for a tardy response, prepping for and celebrating Thanksgiving with the family.
I see you used the expression "it's free country" - I wrote in my latest post (Is America Still Exceptional?) about how I used to hear it all the time, and now I hardly hear it at all in "the land of the free" ...
Thank you for explaining how the English regard their religion. I am, frankly, puzzled. My understanding was that the English were historically a deeply religious people. When did that change so drastically? Why is it necessary to ridicule piety? (And I am not expecting a full answer; if you have a reference for me to examine, that would be great, or feel free to treat these as rhetorical questions - I'm planning to visit England again next year, so I'll plan on preparing a better cultural understanding for that trip.)
I agree with your prescription for no publicly funded faith schools. Hoping for mixed communities, though, strikes me as slightly naive. First- and second-generation immigrants, even from culturally similar countries, tend to cluster together (viz., "Little Italy" and "Irish Riviera" in NY, or "Irish Belt" in Boston); "actively avoiding" that may not be possible in a free country. And culturally distinct immigrants may perpetuate their communities for generations (viz. Chinatowns in most Western countries).
A "strong rule" that clearly includes the right to criticise Islam may not be sufficient - observe the trouble the French have had with actual laws prohibiting hijabs in schools and burqas in public spaces. And how do you enforce an "expectation"?
You may still be at the stage in England when the problem is not even acknowledged; moving from there to actions that will enforce religious freedom and freedom of speech is going to be a harder lift than "a few changes," I am afraid.
Again, thank you for engaging so deeply! This subscriber certainly appreciates it greatly.
I don’t think we’ve ever been a particularly deeply religious country, comparatively speaking. Always rather pragmatic. And the turn to regarding religion as something a bit embarrassing and best considered as a private thing and not brought into conversation has been going on since at least the beginning of the 20th century. If you read people like Enid Blyton and Agatha Christie, you see religion as an understated, private thing and overt statements of it as embarrassing. I worked with elderly people from the age of 17 and some of them were very elderly indeed. The oldest was born in 1878. That generation - what was called the ‘fin de siécle’ saw a turn towards both cynical skeptical and spiritualism and ushered in the modernist period which was very cynical about religion. It’s part of the British dislike of overt emotional expression and anything that could be considered ‘making a fuss’ generally. We’re just a very understated, private people and we dislike zealotry. Someone telling you about their religious beliefs is a bit like telling you about their sex life.
I also think some quite radical changes will need to be made to enable religious freedom and cultural cohesion and address problems related to Islam. I just don’t know what they are. I can only suggest a few obvious things we are not doing. I think the British take the problem much more seriously than Americans and have done for some time. This is supported by polling which directly compares British right-wingers with Trump supporters. The American right remains much more open to racial and religious diversity than the British right and this makes sense as you have always been much more mixed.
https://www.ft.com/content/81b84e4d-15d1-471e-9bf3-5cc64f9e7879
Well, I guess I have to thank you for correcting my mistaken impression of England as a deeply religious country (if not currently, then fairly recently).
Another impression I had was that the British have NOT taken the problem of assimilation seriously, at least until the grooming scandal broke into prominence very recently. I did a semi-deep dive on asylum-seekers coming in by boat, and found out that British embassies do not accept asylum applications - one has to be on British soil in order to apply for asylum! So basically, the government is making asylum very attractive (with housing, stipends, medical services, etc.) and then forcing (figuratively) folks seeking "asylum" to come into the country by whatever means they have available to them to apply for it. Insane!
Finally, I would not have imagined British right-wingers to have a more stringent attitude towards cultural cohesion than American ones. But I looked into it - and, of course, you're right!
Thank you for educating me in these important matters!
P.S. Unfortunately, I can't read the FT article you referenced (they want $75 per month?!?!?)
Ah yes you are referring to the Exmas of the Niatirbians!
https://matiane.wordpress.com/2019/06/10/xmas-and-christmas-a-lost-chapter-from-herodotus-by-c-s-lewis/