Birmingham Christmas Lights to Include Christmas is a great headline but unfortunately the article, written by the otherwise excellent Paul Dale, drags up the ghost of Winterval once again.
Ten years ago, Birmingham became the subject of national ridicule after the council controversially rebranded Christmas as Winterval to avoid offending non-Christians – a move which was described as “madness� by the then Bishop of Birmingham.
Except they didn’t rebrand Christmas as Winterval. They collected all the festivities that take place in the cold months, whether they be religious or secular, under the umbrella of Winterval, just as Easter might be considered part of Springerval.
This was nicely debunked in 2006 by Oliver Burkeman but the myth seems destined to live on thanks to a combination of paranoid anti-PC types and Christians who can’t resist the chance to look all reasonable in the face of absurdity.
It’s mildly depressing but I think it’s worth coming out in favour of the Winterval concept, not just to piss off the idiots but for the sake of Christianity. Yup, I’m looking to help the worshipers of the invisible sky-god on this one.
Christmas is not a religious celebration in this country. It’s an orgy of commercialism and excess. While I don’t pretend to have a personal relationship with Jesus I suspect he’d be rather depressed to see what happens to celebrate his birthday given his dislike of merchants in temples.
Christians need to reclaim Christmas for themselves as a period worship starting on December 25th. They should welcome drawing a conceptual line between their holy day and the month or debauchery and greed that proceeds it. They should welcome Winterval.
(For the record I am not a Christian (duh!) and I hate the run up to Christmas.)
The early northern European Christian missionaries attempted to spread the word through the pagan world and found some serious resistance. Very cleverly, they invoked the principle of “if you can’t beat them, join them” and simply commandeered all the pagan holidays as Christian holidays. They also built their churches on old pagan sites and generally did an effective job of stamping out the pagan ways.
So, Yule became Christmas. This makes sense as the birth of Christ was (and is) seen as a coming of the light and Yule was the festival that immediately followed the shortest day, signifying another summer was on its way. Oestra became Easter and again the parallels are strong – Oestra being the festival of rebirth after winter, Easter the death and resurrection.
So I am always surprised at the arrogance of Christians at the thought that “their” holidays should be sacrosanct. But I would guess that most Christians really do believe that Christ was born on Christmas Day!
I went from ‘Buy Nothing Christmas’ to being a fully paid up member of the Christmas Resistance Movement http://www.xmasresistance.org/
Christmas, Winterval, Consumerfest… call it whatever you like but just leave me out of it :)
I lost my beloved wife Val to cancer six months ago. Before she became ill she worked for BCC in the press office. One of her tasks was to rebut the many stories which (deliberately, I am sure) misrepresented Winterval and thus caused her much stress and anxiety. So thank you for these comments.