Return to Sender

I received this twice in the past couple of days:

Royal Mail has traditionally alternated between sacred and secular designs for their Christmas stamps and this year it is the turn for a religious image. Royal Mail has issued two sets of designs this year. The main set of designs, available in all the main denominations is of angels, which is vaguely Christian but not explicitly so and certainly not specifically Christmassy. They have also issued a ‘Madonna and Child’ design for first and second class only. Post Office staff have been instructed to only sell this design if people specifically request it, but obviously people can’t request it if they don’t know it exists! If people don’t buy these stamps, Royal Mail will claim there is no demand for religious Christmas stamps and not produce them in future. Please therefore ask for ‘Madonna and Child’ stamps when you do your Christmas posting and also tell your friends, contacts etc. to do the same. Thank You.

My first reaction to something like this is, ’so what?’. My second reaction to things like this is ’so what?’.

This is in conjunction with an article in our church magazine urging us christian types to reclaim christmas (for God and for Harry?). Reclaim it from whom? I don’t want to go into the whole history of how it was nicked by christians from pagan festivals of light, but some of that is so entwined with our rather confused festival that it is difficult not to.

Surely the moment a church puts up a christmas tree it is buying into the idea that this festival is more than a celebration of the birth of christ?

We really can’t have it both ways, this is, at best, a mixed - secular and spiritual - celebration, at worst a big party that most christians are happy to indebt themselves to. It seems a bit rich to me to then cry foul when the post office won’t be a bit more sympathetic to our fragile sensibilities.

The more important questions we should be asking is why has one of our main festivals become so secular? What are people looking for at christmas? I know that the christian story is a good one to tell and never more so than at christmas, so why does no one want to hear it?

I hate talk of reclamation, you cannot go backwards, only forwards. There is a new reality out there that churches and the people within had better get to grips with or they will be going the way of the religious stamps, an idle curiosity to wierdos and philatelists (tortologous? - no offence).