O COME ALL YE FAITHFUL…

EXCEPT CHRISTIANS.

 

 

Daily Mail

Wednesday, December 14-2005

 

 

THE WAY IT IS

 

by

 

John Edwards

 

*

Good will to all men

…except Christians.

 

Something would just clear in his head and make Nick Holtam’s Christmas Day sermon really important for a million people listening on the radio. That’s how the writing worked. He was sitting near a computer, with 12 days to go, thinking hard, and the wonderful church of St-Martin-in-the -Fields threw a shadow into the office.

 

High up, Nelson watched and listened to everything in Trafalgar Square. The message of

 

CHRISTMAS

 

was going to be upfront.

 

Nick, vicar of St Martin said it was one of the most celebrated positions in all of Christian Britain.

 

This sermon would be composed with care and much rehearsal. The next bit might be tricky. CHRISTMAS was under attack from politically correct half-wits in council offices and the

Home Office.

 

‘If only people would understand,’ he said yesterday, getting ready to go into the church and take one of the many daily services. When Christians celebrate our own faith it always accommodates others. For almost all of history, we’ve managed to live with each other, broadly, with respectful tolerance.

 

Then along comes a total Home Office lamebrain and he threatens to withdraw a

 

£2000 grant

 

[Taxpayers money no doubt collected from the 40,000,000 who in a recent poll said they were Christians -good or bad -they paid their taxes.]

 

The grant that allowed families of murder victims to have their annual carol concert in St Martin.

 

Much too Christian and in a church.

 

He [lamebrain] wrote to the families. Not enough ethics involved, either. That was only one of a wave of dismal threats and decisions made by gloomy people hiding in their miserable, tax-funded rooms up and down the country.

 

Nick’s phone started to ring.

My friend, Rabbi David Goldberg from St John’s Wood synagogue, was on straightaway.

 

He said the Jewish community up there would guarantee the £2000 to the families.

 

There was no line drawn in the sand, Christians this side, Jews the other. David stepped in immediately.’ There wasn’t a lot of intolerance as far as Nick could see.

 

WHY do you think these crazies in their cozy council offices are on the attack, Nick asked.

 

‘My personal opinion is that it’s happened because we have become unsure of our own identity.

 

‘It involves that question. What does it mean to be British?”

 

‘I think it means we respect basic freedoms and tolerances. There’s fairness to life and honesty.

 

‘It appears to me that if you don’t accept that, then we’re all in trouble.

 

Also it was SILLY to pretend that everyone is the SAME.

 

They’re not.

 

Another thing that bothered him was any attempt to water down

 

CHRISTMAS

 

‘Its not a celebration of WINTER.

 

It celebrates

 

the birth of

 

Jesus.

 

They are not winter lights.

 

They’re

 

CHRISTMAS LIGHTS.

 

Any other interpretation is daft’

 

Crowds were walking into St Martin for a lunchtime concert, a great London tradition. It used to be the great pianist, Dame Myra Hess, playing for the troops in the war. Bombs fell just down the road.

 

St Martin has survived a whole library of crises.

 

Do you reckon the CHURCH as a whole is in trouble right now?

 

‘Oh no. No, no. Everybody says the Church of England id dead. The reality is that the congregation of St Martin is up 5 or 6 per cent. Similar figures throughout LONDON.

 

‘This Christmas, we’re going to be turning hundreds of people away. We have a video link for the overspill into the CRYPT.’

 

That doesn’t sound like the death throes for

 

CHRISTMAS.

It isn’t.

 

And when you have elements in Government or Local Councils trying to generalise

 

About religion

 

About CHRISTMAS in particular it needs a strong response.

 

The world will not be a better place if we ALL have to come down to the lowest COMMON DENOMINATOR.

 

And he was sure that Christian celebrations of love and beauty, and definitely CHRISTMAS, wouldn’t go away because of some doom-filled minion counting days to a comfortable pension.

 

Nick went over to St Martin and looked out at all the people with their shopping, waiting for the music. Two women had Hamley’s bags.

 

Do you think a lot of councils and sections of the Government are trying to kill CHRISTMAS, one of the women was asked.

 

‘I do, I do, she said and loudly, so that she was heard in the next pew.

 

This horrible Government, especially that horrible Blair man, is trying to give it away. He won’t be remembered for anything else, so his only chance is as the man who [tried] stopped CHRISTMAS.

 

The women disturbed in the other pew, she would like to go further. But Nick had gone on the microphone and the music just started. She never got a chance to say her piece.

 

It must be a little daunting, Nick said, for everyone who was going down the anti-Christmas road, to find out that

 

46 million people in the UK declared themselves Christian at the last census.

 

Any thoughts on the sermon? He would go into the pulpit and look at the jam-packed congregation in

one of the most famous Churches on Earth.

 

A million listening on

Radio 4.

 

‘You simply don’t go into the pulpit at St Martins and not realise it’s something important.’

 

He would speak about the implications of the Christian story.

 

-and the first words written already, would be

 

‘In the name of

God…’

Because this is just how he had started all HIS 25 CHRISTMAS sermons.

 

It had always engaged the congregation. There was absolutely no need for a change.

 

[For further details of Christmas sermon and Radio 4 broadcast]

 

 

John.t.Edwards@dailymail.co.uk

 

[Font altered-bolding and underling used-comment in brackets]

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DEC/05