The editorial inbox has received a number of distinctly odd e-mails this month.  I’ve picked a couple of my favourites from a couple of names you may recognise which strike me as particularly instructive of two views on Christmas and the New Year.

Comrade Editor,

As I predicted earlier this year Putin has appointed himself as arch-autocrat over all of Russia, his party crushing freedom and liberty and making a mockery of the supposedly democratic process in its election. As usual the event was an exercise in foregone conclusionism which served effectively as a means to ensure that the rightist power base could claim some mockery of legitimacy. As I anticipated he has appointed the thug that will follow him, once again making a mockery of any allegations of democracy made by him and entirely in order to ensure that his powerbase is solidified and consolidated and that he can remain supreme overlord by any means possible Again, as I predicted the only faction which could resist this onslaught (indeed the only one which still has seats!) is the Communists, whose noble and steadfast resistance of the encroaching fascism upon every aspect of their existence is crippling the country marks them out as the greatest heroes of this decade, joint with the bold freedom fighters struggling in Iraq to drive the foul western pig from their lands.

So I hope in 2008 to see another violent uprising against the forces that bind, confine and oppress the worker, and hand his wealth over to a select few sociopaths who are deranged and brutal enough to ascend the ranks of industry to the wretched pinnacle. I hope that the blood of the plutocrats once again cleanses the streets of Moscow and that the command of the country returns to who it belongs: the Russian people. I hope that the fine principles of democratic centralism are put into place again and that the Soviet Empire is reborn, rising from the ashes to unite the divided, disenchanted people of the East and bringing them together under the unified, united aim of freedom and equality, with death to all and any who oppose it. I hope that the thugs are overthrown and given the death that their kind fears, I hope that pride and power is returned to Russia.

The Communists alone are the voice of the Russian People, all other alternative movements having either been submitted to the sickening dominance of the arrogant dog Putin. Only Communists refuse to be subordinate to his ego, only Communists have the stamina to resist.

But comrades, they are enough.

Vive la Revival!
Comrade A.P. Ologist

Dear Sir,

Given your publication’s poor record on religion, family and traditional values, I fear that your writers will waste no time in denying the existence of a true Christmas.  This will not do.  Christmas is an essential part of our rich island heritage, a bright and joyful thread in the tapestry of our great nation.  To remove it from our lives would seriously deprive not only us, but our children, and all those that come after us.

Even the die-hard atheist Richard Dawkins will admit that, “ours is historically a Christian culture, and children who grow up ignorant of biblical literature are diminished, unable to take literary allusions, actually impoverished.”  This is perhaps the most correct statement the man has ever made.  We – the British – are a historically Christian nation.  Our culture, our democracy, even our very speech is shot through with the blood of Christ.  If nothing else, how would you cope without being able to exclaim, “Good God!” at some random mishap? The fact is that you wouldn’t.  If you were born, bought up in and bred in majority in Great Britain, you couldn’t.  You wouldn’t have another expression of appropriately mild disbelief in your arsenal, as you wouldn’t have learned one.  It is part of your breeding, your culture and, ultimately, the identity that is formed by it.

And that identity is necessary.  We all need an identity.  What are we, without it?  Tiny.  A simple, lone, emotional individual in a hostile and alien world that, once you have cut yourself off from it as such, cares nothing for you.  You, meanwhile, will be set against it by its own hostility, and soon the only care you will feel for your fellow men is when it in your own interests.

This removal of collective identity will lead to an atomisation of society.  An atomisation of society will lead to selfish anarchy.  That will lead to extinction. This is why the traditional Christian Christmas is essential in the United Kingdom.  The steady secularisation of the festival represents the steady rise of atheism in this country – encouraged, I fear, by the government (Winterval, anyone?).  How many of those disgusting socialists in the Labour party are atheists?  Yes, that’s right.  Most of them.  It is, by and large, a godless creed.  And they have long sought to destroy our religious heritage – all this inclusion nonsense is, after all, little more than a steady assault on Christianity in the UK. They are bastardising our identity at the expense of others.  But from each of these other identities, they take only a tiny part – so we are left with a discordant, unwilling, ultimately ill-matched motley of traditions all pulling away in different directions.  The consequences could be dire. Secularising Christmas is only the first step.  Atheism is the next.  Anarchy is the last. We must defend our traditions, or face eradication.

Regards, 
C. Blimp.