THE SUNDAY TIMES: Following the national news can be bad for the blood pressure. According to a press leak, the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) - Labour’s favourite think tank and one which has the ear of power - is to publish a report saying Christmas should be downgraded to improve race relations.
In the interests of "evenhandedness", the report says, and "if we are going to continue as a nation to mark Christmas - it would be very hard to expunge it from our national life, even if we wanted to - then public organisations should mark other religious festivals too". Presumably that means marking them equally, because "we can no longer define ourselves as a Christian nation, nor an especially religious one".
This all sounds familiar, of course. We have become used to absurd stories of British Christmases being renamed Winterval, or children’s carols being stopped for fear of offending minorities - many of them true. We all know that the Christian Tony Blair and most top politicians send "season’s greetings" instead of Christmas cards. It is unabashed, yet guilt-ridden, decadent multiculturalism.
Sure enough, Ben Rogers and Rick Muir, the authors, do indeed call on the government to launch an "urgent and upfront campaign" to promote "a multicultural understanding of Britishness". They rehearse the old arguments: different communities should not be expected to integrate but should be allowed to maintain their own cultures and identities; immigrants should learn some English and something of British culture, "if - but only if - the settled population is willing to open up national institutions and practices to newcomers and give a more inclusive cast to national narratives and symbols".
Meanwhile, national ceremonies, civic oaths, parliament and the monarchy must be recast in a more multi-religious or secular form. Parents should be made to attend a public state ritual of citizenship for their new babies when registering their birth; "parents, their friends and family and the state [would] agree to work in partnership to support and bring up their child". Presumably this would include an undertaking not to celebrate Christmas "inappropriately or exclusively". Let’s stop pretending all faiths are equal (more) By Minnette Marrin
Mark Alexander
