Philip delves broughton
About ten years ago, the American cable TV host Bill O’reilly launched an attack on companies he felt were waging war on Christmas by not wishing their customers a ‘Merry Christmas’, but ‘Happy Holidays’ or some such.
O’reilly, always a shouty and dubious exemplar of Christian behaviour, has since been defenestrated after multiple accusations of sexual harassment and tens of millions of dollars paid in settlements. Since then, the President has taken up the theme. He recently told Christian activists in Washington, ‘We’re getting near that beautiful Christmas season that people don’t talk about anymore. They don’t use the word Christmas because it’s not politically correct. You go to department stores and they’ll say “Happy New Year” or they’ll say other things... Well, guess what? We’re saying “Merry Christmas” again.’
Donald Trump is technically a Presbyterian. But his ‘spiritual counsellor’ is a Floridian Pentecostalist named Paula White. Like Trump, she has been married three times and embraces the idea that those God loves he makes filthy rich. White has amassed a fortune preaching her prosperity gospel on television. It is the closest we have these days to a presidential theology. So it makes perfect sense that Trump’s most fully articulated views on religion are linked to marketing and shopping.
It’s more yowling from a cultural group panicking over its waning influence than theology. There’s an outfit in Tupelo, Mississippi, the birthplace of Elvis, called the American Family Association (AFA), which compiles an annual list of companies it deems ‘Christmas-friendly’ or not, based on their advertising. If a company sells Christmassy items, such as trees, wreaths, lights or plastic reindeers, but doesn’t use the word Christmas, then it is accused of censorship. The AFA is selling a wristband this year to support its campaign to ‘Keep Christ in Christmas’. I’d rather hear from an organisation dedicated to keeping Christ as in ‘Christ, I haven’t bought any presents and it’s Christmas Eve.’ Or Turk in turkey. Partly because Christ and Christmas in America seem to be in a broadly healthy relationship. And also because I was always taught that, in the hit parade of Christian festivals, Christmas comes well below Easter.
Christmas is all sentiment and childish wonder. Easter is the hard stuff: agony, death, passion, suffering, redemption. If you’re going to take up arms for a Christian festival, it’s the bunny you should have in your crosshairs. Christ is dying a slow death, nailed to a cross, redeeming our sins, and we’re all tongue-deep in Creme Eggs?
It’s easy to find the oddness in American Christianity. A big new museum just opened close to the White House dedicated to the Bible and funded by a family that made its fortune selling kits for arts and crafts. It’s got restaurants called Manna and Milk & Honey, and a room where children can pretend to be Samson and push at a pair of columns until they fall down.
But if you’re English and sniggering, I’d match the Museum of the Bible in Washington, and raise you with the story of the JCR hotheads at Balliol College, Oxford, who tried banning the Christian Union from their freshers’ fair, on the grounds that it might seem alienating and exclusive to non-christians.
In my experience, university Christian Unions are the least exclusive organisations imaginable, far less so than the countless meathead sports clubs. Their members are delighted if anyone at all shows up, beaming and ready with a cup of tea and a digestive biscuit, whether you’re an indigent Ismaili or a billionaire Buddhist. Thankfully, the Balliol hotheads were overruled.
The good news in America is that there’s no entrenched ruling class here who find the whole notion of faith utterly risible. I’ve been at homes where the family unself-consciously joins hands to pray before meals. Their socioeconomic equivalents in Britain – ‘Pass the Sancerre, Rory’ – would be in fits.
In America, you can find precisely the kind of Christmas you want. In New York on Christmas Day, you can ignore the whole thing and head out with the Jewish families for Chinese food. Or you can try to find a pew in one of the great Episcopal churches, such as St James’ on Madison Avenue, which are packed with perfectly combed and braided families, all beaming at the blessing of another profitable year on Wall Street.
My father, a British clergyman, didn’t sanction the decoration of the plastic Christmas tree in the vicarage until Christmas Eve. Christmas began as he prepared to serve midnight mass and ended twelve days later with Epiphany. As a choirboy, I had to stay at school until after evensong on Christmas Day. So, for several crucial years of my sentimental education, Christmas didn’t begin until late on Christmas Day.
The Episcopal churches in New York and Connecticut that I’ve attended with any frequency are quite austere. They are stripped down and dark for Advent and erupt back into colour on Christmas Eve. My church in Connecticut then goes gangbusters for Epiphany, with a show of colossal puppets inspired by similar pageants in Germany. Still, I enjoy Boxing Day the most. The emptiness of it, the time to sort through the books given the day before, the cooking, eating and carolling behind us. There’s occasional pleading in the ranks to venture out for discounts and returns. But, luckily, we live far from the nearest mall.
Philip Delves Broughton was New York correspondent for the Daily Telegraph from 1998 to 2002
The Oldie