Secular God

Following yesterday's blog about Christmas stamps (Embarrassed by God) I received the following comment from a blog-reader:

You've got this story back to front.
Royal Mail have many years issued secular and religious Christmas stamps on alternate years. This year was due to be a secular year. (2006 stamps featured Santa Claus in the snow, 2007 featured the Madonna stamps etc). For 2008 last year's religious stamps are being re-issued as an optional choice.
So rather than asking why they're only available "under the counter" (which is a bit of an exaggeration given the media attention), you should be asking if secular stamps will also be available in parallel next year for the non-religious.

So, in reply, I'd like to add:

On the other hand …. Christmas is an annual festival to commemorate the birth of Christ.
Not just on alternate years, or taking turns with Peter Pan, or just as long as it doesn't offend anyone.
If people want to celebrate December 25 as a bank holiday with pantomime stamps (or inflatable Santas, luminous reindeer, binge-eating, credit card debt or any other form of jollity) no one's stopping them
But insisting that Jesus Christ has nothing to do with Christmas for the 'non-religious' is odd.
As is stopping shopkeepers (including our local Hindus) from displaying nativity scenes in their shop window.
And insisting on rebranding Christmas as 'Winterfest' or some other title that omits the word 'Christ'.
And allowing schoolchildren to perform plays about fairies and witches, or dances commemorating goddesses, but not plays and songs retelling the birth of Jesus.
Jesus Christ never came for the religious (including the secular humanists) who had their belief systems all sorted out. They didn't like him or his followers, and still don't.
He came for people who were sick to death of superficiality and hypocrisy, especially in themselves, and wanted a different way to live life. He was born a homeless baby and was tortured and executed for offending both religious and secular establishments.
That truth can't be summed up in Madonna and Child stamps or Bethlehem-stable Christmas cards, but for me it comes nearer than Mother Goose or Frosty the Snowman, and I'd like the option of a Christmas image including Christ to be available, openly, publicly, on show, over the counter, in the windows, on the streets, once a year at Christmas – every year – regardless of whether it's considered to be politically correct or internationally inoffensive.