Without Jesus and with less Santa, what does Christmas mostly consist of?

More than ever this year I find friends planning to go abroad for Christmas, some to countries such as India where the sun shines and Christmas is barely celebrated at all. I can see why. The goodwill and good cheer that the festival is intended to foster is all too often outweighed by the stress and anxiety it causes. This has been the case for years, but it gets worse with the passage of time. More couples divorce, more families break up, and Christmas tends not to heal such wounds but to aggravate them.

The preparations for Christmas are more than joyless; they are soul-destroying. Try visiting Oxford Street at this time of year; or rather, don’t. There is frenzy in the air, and it can’t be attributed to philanthropy. The people fighting in department stores on Black Friday were not, I think, looking for nice presents for their children, but were being driven by some kind of mindless greed.