As I write, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has just announced "Tier 4" restrictions (of a tier system that only included Tiers 1, 2 and 3 before today) for London and other parts of East and South East England, effective pretty much immediately on his announcement. The announcement also included a significant modification of the previous rulings with regard to household mixing over Christmas for the whole of England, modifications that have been mirrored in Scotland and Wales.
The London Evening Standard website headlines its report: Tier 4 rules for London as Christmas cancelled by stay at home lockdown.
Even before Boris Johnson's announcement, the London Times newspaper for today was carrying two letters suggesting that the celebration of Christmas could be moved to another time.
Sir:
Surely it's all in the marketing. Were the government to declare that Christmas is banned there would be a surge of resentment and many people would carry on regardless. However, if it were to change its pitch to: "Clearly, celebrating Christmas now is not in anybody's interest, so the government declared Christmas will be celebrated at Easter 2021", this would offer hope rather than despair. Countless lives would be saved and millions of people would breathe a sigh of relief.
Sir:
Given the restrictions, perhaps we could instead follow the example of Australia. "Christmas in July" would give us six months to vaccinate everyone and would allow families to enjoy the festivities out of doors.
Whilst allowing for a measure of the tongue-in-cheek, particularly with the first of these letters, nonetheless a sense seems to prevail that the celebration of the Feast of Christmas can readily be moved or cancelled at legislative or social whim.
The first component of the religious illiteracy that gives rise to this prevailing sense is the feeling that the celebration of the feast has its essence in the gathering of family and friends on Christmas Day. This certainly forms a part of our celebration of the day, when we are able to so gather; but it is not the essence of the Feast, or of what we celebrate in the Feast.
The essence of the Feast is the celebration of the Nativity of Jesus Christ, the birth in human flesh of the Son of God, who is both true man and true God. When the gathering of friends and family, and the special lunch that may accompany it, becomes completely separated from this celebration of belief in the mystery of the Incarnation, it ceases to possess the character of a piety that reflects a religious faith; it isn't a celebration of Christmas. (Though I would add, in passing, that even where the celebration of Christian faith is weak, there is still the potential for the family gathering to point, even in an indistinct way, towards the event of faith.)
The second component of religious illiteracy that gives rise to this prevailing sense lies in the failure to recognise the connection in the life of faith between the Feast being celebrated and the specific day given over to that celebration. This is about the religious character of time, expressed in the Christian religion by the Liturgical calendar, but also found in Judaism, Islam and other religions which assign their feasts to specific days. The celebration of these religious Feasts simply cannot be moved arbitrarily by powers outside the relevant religious communities, and even within those communities any movement of feasts is constrained to a very high degree. Whilst we cannot expect everyone to share belief in this understanding of a religious character to time, is it too much to ask of journalists and public figures to at least show by how they write or speak about our Feast days that they have an understanding of the concept?
So, in 2020, while the human aspects of the celebration of the Feast of Christmas may be curtailed, the essentially religious celebration remains in its full splendour.
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