Should we cancel Christmas?

Ann Farmer

December 19, 2023 5 Reactions

G.K. Chesterton was well aware of the danger of fashionable ideas, although in his day bizarre obsessions were confined to a few cranks. But he warned that when people say that an idea is “only in the air”, that is the best time to parry a blow – when the hatchet is still in the air.

Chesterton was a great fan of Christmas and defended it with all the zest of his poetry and paradox. “When we were children we were grateful to those who filled our stockings at Christmas time,” he wrote. “Why are we not grateful to God for filling our stockings with legs?”

Even if Christmas were no more than a fairy tale, we need fairy tales as much as we need water, air, and mince pies.

In his own time Chesterton warned against those who would ban fairy tales because they are scary and unrealistic. But, he said, children are not afraid of fairy tales for the simple reason that they were born into a fairy tale: into a land of giants who can perform magic, who can illuminate a room by a mere movement of the hand; who can restore order to chaos; who can save them from starving; who can rescue them from being trapped in their own sweater.

As to being frightened by stories of dragons – a fear still entertained by progressive parents -- he said that children already know that there are dragons; they just need to know they can be slain.

Chesterton believed that in fairy tales there is a deeper layer of truth; he would surely say that fairy tales protect us from the worst excesses of wokeness – that they provide us with weapons to slay the woke dragon. The tale of the Emperor’s new clothes points out the blindingly obvious – that a man is a man and a woman is a woman; the tale of Chicken Little reminds over-excited greens that the sky is not falling down when an acorn falls on their head.

And in an age when we are told that the wolf is misunderstood and that the real danger is the grandmother; when we are constantly urged to overstep the mark in the interests of personal freedom and choice, the story of Cinderella can teach us the vital value of boundaries. She had to return by midnight or break the spell and lose everything. The real lesson is that patient virtue wins in the end; that we cannot steal the magic but must respect its rules.

If the wokerati had a magic wand, I am sure that they would use it to wave away the reason for the season. But hopefully the magic of Christmas will overcome their pet preoccupations, especially as “good will to all” is such an inclusive message.

Christmas is surely the holiday we need from woke madness, when we worship the weak and put down the powerful from their thrones. A little harmless nonsense is just what we need to restore what Chesterton prized so highly -- our common sense.

And to anyone who says otherwise, with Scrooge, we can respond: “Bah! Humbug!”    

Ann Farmer writes from the United Kingdom. 

Image: Pixlr AI art