I was talking to my mum in the UK earlier this afternoon.  She told me some things that literally boggled my mind and left me gobsmacked (that's 'speechless' for those not familiar with Brit-speak).

For instance, she said that you'd be hard pressed to find a Christmas card that had a religious scene on the front of it. No Nativity scenes, no three wise men, no shepherds watching their flocks, no angels.  Nothing that mentions the reason for the season.

When the Round Table (a charitable organization) drove their motorized sleigh around my hometown (they've done it every Christmas for as long as I can recall) there weren't Christmas carols blaring out of the speakers.  Instead people were treated to (don't laugh at this) The Monkees 'I'm a believer'.  Yeah.  Very festive, that.  Ho freakin' ho.

There has been talk among the various members of district council that people should be discouraged from using the term 'Christmas' and should instead use 'The Winter Holiday'.  Perhaps it's just me, but somehow "Merry Winter Holiday!" doesn't quite sound right.  Doesn't put me in a Christmass-y mood at all.

The children who go door-to-door singing carols for money aren't actually singing carols anymore - and havent been for quite a few years now.  They sing 'Jingle Bells' and 'Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer', mum said, and she had to tell them that she wasn't going to give them any money unless they sang a Christmas carol or two.  The ones who came around over the weekend couldn't come up with anything other than 'Away In A Manger' and even then they only knew half the words (here's a little trivia for you: did you know that the British version of that carol is sung to a completely different tune?). 

She and I had quite a lengthy discussion about what the hell is going on in the UK.  Apparently, people are SOOOOO afraid of offending the country's sizeable Muslim population that they're doing away with any and everything that mentions religion - more specifically, Christianity.  It's okay to talk about Ramadan and to hear the Muezzin's call to prayer six times a day, but they can't say 'Christmas' or have cards with the baby Jesus on the front of them. 

It's ridiculous.  Britain has been a Christian country for hundreds of years; the monarch is the head of the Church of England, for crying out loud.  The Muslims that are living in the UK now stem from the flood of immigrants who were given free entry by way of an apology for the raping and pillaging that was done to their homelands during the expansion of the glorious British Empire.  Tolerance and respect of each other's faiths is a 2-way street - and right now, it seems that British Christians are being asked to kowtow to Islam and give up any and all references to their faith so as not to offend those poor wee Muslims - who are, as we all know, very touchy and easily upset.  The banners saying things like 'Europe is the cancer, Islam is the answer' at the demonstrations in London this past spring are a good indication of how easily offended British Muslims are.  Nobody seems to give a rat's behind about how offended British Christians are - and I never, ever thought that I'd be advocating for Christianity.  That should give some of my regular readers an idea of how irritated all of this is making me.

 Stupidity like this isn't doing anything to promote tolerance between the faiths, all it's doing is shoving an even bigger wedge between them and straining even further an already tense relationship.  If some of these suggestions are actually adopted and written into law, it wouldn't surprise me to see more bombings in London - but this time, it'll be the British Christian extremists that will be doing the bombing.