蜜芽传媒

Tis鈥� the season to be outraged. First there was this whole business about the baby Jesus being replaced by a sausage roll in an advertisement for a well-known bakery. And then there were those who were apparently offended by an advert that showed a Muslim family getting their Christmas turkey in.

And I say 鈥榓pparently offended鈥� because, even though there may have been some, I don鈥檛 actually know a single religious person that was at all bothered by any of this. Responding to the sausage roll advert, a spokesman for the Evangelical Alliance said, and I quote 鈥淚鈥檓 not outraged鈥� 鈥� and yet somehow this didn鈥檛 make its way into the mainstream press. The story of religious grumpiness comes pre-formatted, as does the idea that Christmas is under threat from the variety of different ways in which a diverse population might celebrate it. The belief that a Muslim family buying a turkey constitutes some sort of challenge to the integrity of the Christmas story is the product of a manufactured outrage that comes more naturally to social media than it does to ordinary human conversation. At least, that鈥檚 my experience.

For example, my wife is Jewish. She comes from Tel Aviv and hasn鈥檛 grown up with any Christmas traditions at all. Nonetheless, she will come to church all over the Christmas and Advent periods because she loves singing carols. And when it comes to Hanukkah, I will be lighting candles and making doughnuts. And there are a great many mixed-religion families like this who get on with things without conflict and by ignoring the sort of excessive ideological tidy-mindedness that tries to cause trouble between people of different faiths.

Throughout the history of religion there have of course been those who have got all terribly offended by what is called syncretism, the coming together of different religious practices. But Christmas itself has always been a highly syncretistic business and there never had been such thing as a pure Christmas that needs protecting.

Moreover, many of us who have interfaith families understand that whilst some religious differences may not hang together in theory 鈥� they can get along perfectly fine in practice. That鈥檚 why I rather like my religion to be driven by its festivals and its liturgy rather than by its doctrine and its ideologues. As Goethe once said 鈥渋n the beginning is the deed鈥�. In other words, it鈥檚 what we do that comes first. And what we mean by it that follows on behind, struggling to keep up. This is particularly the case with religion. Belief grows out of doing. What matters most is our forms of practice, not how we arrange that practice in our heads. And an inclusive food, festivals and family approach to Christmas surely carries a much more peaceable message than those who may get all offended by the transgression of strict theological boundaries or the curious use of a sausage roll.

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