Keep Christmas pagan

Keep Christmas pagan Charles Dickens’ Ghost of Christmas Present preceded by half a century the icon of of Father Christmas made familiar by the Coca-Cola Company. So he is described as dressed in a loose-fitting robe of dark green, trimmed with white fur, and crowned with a circlet of holly. (Ouch.)

Christmas is of course the pagan Yuletide (still called Jul in Scandinavia) glossed and adopted by Christians a thousand years ago. The holly, the tree, the presents, the feasting — the Christmas we mostly keep — is the feast we kept long before the Christians arrived in the 9th century.

Moreover, while the Church adopted and adapted the festival, it never really approved of it. After the Revolution, Oliver Cromwell banned it and sent out police to force shopkeepers to open. And so it lay despised until Dickens resuscitated Christmas in the 19th century; which is why our images of it — coaches, cloaks and high hats in the snow — owe so much to his period.

Don’t you have any truck with austerity or “keep Christmas Christian”. Lay it on with a trowel.

And bring beggars to your banquet.