The Vibe Christmas Debate: Should we just get rid of Christmas?

(c) Scott Feldstein

Merry Christmas! And welcome to The Vibe’s penultimate debate of the year, which is asking a unique and controversial question. Should we just do away with Christmas once and for all? Simon Stiel takes his regular place to argue in favour of the festival, whilst Tony Koutsoumbos makes his début on this feature with an intriguing argument to quadruple our festive fun at the expense of the Christmas holiday. It’s a shorter debate than usual, with a piece both for and against, rather than the back and forth dialogue that we usually have. This is because it’s Christmas! So we want you all to join in with the festive debating fun and create the dialogue. Before you do that, here are the two sides of the Christmas coin…

Four bank holidays for the price of one

Tony Koutsoumbos 

I want to abolish Christmas. I am not the Grinch, I am not Scrooge and I am a Christian, if that matters. However, I am also a guy who spends most of the year hard at work and feels that there aren’t enough bank holidays for people like me and I feel that abolishing Christmas would go some way to rectifying this.

So, what am I proposing? I want to replace the holiday period that currently comprises Christmas Day and Boxing Day (and an extra bank holiday on top of that if you’re lucky enough to live in free-riding Scotland) with four new bank holidays spread across the month of December. In other words, I want to abolish this two day holiday, so we can double it and have twice as much fun as we do at Christmas.

What on earth would these extra new holidays be celebrating, I hear the Christmas purists sneer? Good question. The core of my proposal is this: Christmas is not solely about Jesus Christ. It is a fudge of three separate festivals, of which the birth of Our Lord is but one. The other two are the festival of St Nicholas, from which we derive the myth of Santa Claus, and the pagan Yuletide festival celebrating the Winter solstice.

Let me also get one thing straight with you. This is not a rant about the commercialisation of Christmas. In fact, I imagine the holiday must have been pretty boring before Coca Cola got in on the act and invented the po-faced, red cheeked, white bearded, drink-driving, reindeer abusing image of Santa that we all know and love. I like getting presents and I like eating and drinking copious amounts of food and drink, which is why I would like to return these holidays to their original dates and celebrate each of them individually.

In addition, it would allow those who take the birth of Christ and the life of St Nicholas seriously to devote an entire day to each of those festivals rather than have to endure them being hijacked by people like me who are only in it for the presents and the parties.

And what about that final day? That bank holiday would be dedicated to all the other religious festivals that take place in December, such as Chanukah, in recognition that it is not only Christians, in our proudly multicultural country, who have something to celebrate at this time of year.

So, that’s my argument: more time off, more parties, more presents and respect and good will to those who value their religious festivals as an important opportunity to pay tribute to God. That’s why we should abolish Christmas and Bah Humbug to all you Scrooges out there who think I should be happy with my paltry two days off at the end of the year. 

Humbug to humbug: Christmas is worth it

Simon Stiel

For some of us, this is the first time in our lives we’ll see a White Christmas. Over recent years, we’ve heard several stories, some of them apocryphal, about councils wanting the do away with the name altogether. It is more important than ever that we keep it alive. 

The Christmas holiday is a fascinating example of the evolution of tradition. Public holidays should serve to educate as well as celebrate. In a decade where rhetoric about the “clash of civilisations” has been widespread, Christmas demonstrates the folly of believing in pure, unchanging civilisations. Its message and history are extremely relevant today. When the Romans were present in Britain, they celebrated the god Mithras, who was born on 25 December. They gave gifts to each other and like the Christian tale of Jesus, Mithras was sent by a supreme being to enlighten humanity. Over the ages, it has acquired symbols from other cultures, like Christmas trees and Christmas cards and they’ve had enduring popular appeal. 

In a decade when multiculturalism has been come under criticism, particularly on the left, Christmas is an occasion that binds British people, irrespective of faith, together. It’s not for any faith to appropriate for itself since all faiths can find their own messages in it and have something in common even when they have had holidays at different times of the year.  

For those who are of no faith, it is important. Christmas is a celebration of freedom and that is why dictatorships, from Cromwell’s Commonwealth to the Eastern bloc have sought to stamp it. 

Charles Leadbeater said that human beings in modern society are “Bowling Alone”. It is a time where you’re not alone. You’re with your loved ones and for one day, you’re forgetting about the troubles and pressures of your life.

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