Auberon Waugh’s Christmas Sermon

Writing in the 23 December 1966 edition of The Spectator, Auberon Waugh considers the role of Christianity, in all its forms, in an English Christmas.

It’s not hard to see why most grown-ups detest Christmas nowadays. It is expensive and tawdry, a time for self-deception and false sentiment. It is a children’s feast, which is why we all pretend to be children and show gratitude for unwelcome presents and rot our fragile insides with poisonous green crystallised fruit. To crown all the meretricious jollity and make-believe, an enormous number of grown-up Englishmen go to church.

This has become as much part of Christmas as the plum pudding, and I think it is time it stopped. Christmas as we know it has nothing whatever to do with religion. Religion is something which flourishes obstinately day by day, week by week, in the hearts and minds of a tiny, disregarded minority. For them — or at any rate for those whose religion derives at some stage from Christianity — Christmas is yet another great feast in the liturgical cycle, not as important as Easter but rather more noteworthy than Epiphany or Ascension Day.