Cards and Carols and Christmas traditions!

According to something I read recently, religious images are disappearing from Christmas cards. Or rather, Christmas cards with religious imagery are simply not being bought and sent as frequently as they used to be.

“Out of almost 6,000 types of Christmas card on sale in supermarkets, card shops and convenience stores sampled, only 34 featured nativity scenes.

Even when cards with other vaguely religious images, such as choirs or church pews, on the front were included, the total amounted to only two per cent.

Some shops had no Christian-themed cards at all on sale while others had only a handful, with the rest dominated by images of Father Christmas, snowmen or Christmas trees.”

So read the report. I did my own bit of research. Out of the twenty cards I can currently see on the mantelpiece here, four have religious imagery. 25%!!! Our friends must be quite conventional!

Add to the shock-horror thing the fact that another poll found that most people do not know the words to well-known Christmas carols. (Hmm! If people do not know the words, can they still be regarded as “well known”?) I am not surprised. If people do not go to church, how are they going to learn the words to the Christmas carols? And then there are the schools, where sometimes traditional carols are rejected as “stuffy” and are replaced with new and trendy songs.

We were pleased this weekend to have our southern-based granddaughter sing “Little donkey” for us: a good, traditional children’s song for Christmas. She also sang “Jingle bells” and “We wish you a merry Christmas”. All these are featured in her pre-school nativity play, complete with actions: “follow that star tonight” with her had indicating a sweep of sky!

Mind you, back when I was of an age to be a nativity play (I was an angel in a white nightdress with fine, white, feathery wings fastened to my back) we had to learn all the verses of “Oh, Little Town of Bethlehem”. And there was absolutely no mention of asking for figgy pudding!

The whole awareness thing gets worse: “a test involving 2,000 adults and children found that while basic knowledge of the Christmas story is still strong, some people mixed up the Shepherds and Wise men with Father Christmas”. As a non-believer who gave up church going in my teens, I am possibly the last to insist that people should go to church. But I do think everyone should learn the bible stories. They are part of our culture after all. And our children should be learning about other religious beliefs and stories as well. Understanding breeds tolerance! Well, that’s my take on it anyway.

For the last few years, indeed the last six or seven years, a friend and I have sort of begun our Christmas by going to a carol service. Her daughter worked for some time for Addiction Dependency Solutions in Manchester and they organised a service to raise funds every year. So along we went and sang our hearts out. This year it has not happened. No carol service organised. My friend found an alternative but it coincided with the weekend visit by our son and his family.

So singing “Little donkey” and “Rudolf, the red-nosed reindeer” in my kitchen had to do instead. But we gathered all the family together and had an early Christmas celebration. Repeat performance next Monday but minus the southern branch of the family!