‘Because there was no room for them in the (Dundee) Inn’
The City of Dundee
Dundee lights move angers city’s churches
COUNCIL ACCUSED OF BANNING CHRISTMAS AS FESTIVE EVENT DROPS RELIGIOUS REFERENCES
BY APRIL MITCHINSON
Published: 13/11/2009
Local church leaders have accused Dundee City Council of banning Christmas after it emerged all religious references have been removed from the city’s annual festive lights switch-on.
As well as changing the name to the Dundee Winter Light Night, the council has decided to drop the telling of the Christmas story from the official programme.
Instead of the traditional Nativity tale, the festival will feature a disco, a contemporary circus, a continental market and a giant stilt-walking fairy.
The changes were revealed when the programme of events was unveiled at Discovery Point.
Disgruntled members of the Presbytery of Dundee claim the council is “eroding a religious festival” and have now voted to make an official complaint.
Read the rest here
I am not as irate about this story as some of my Dundee brethren seem to be. I understand their feeling and I join them in regretting the eviction of the Lord Jesus from the annual celebration of His birth. But isn’t it the case that the Council is only being true to its colours? After all, a city council cannot be expected to make the Christmas story of the birth of the infant Son of God a high priority when our Lord Jesus Christ is not a high priority at any other time of the year. In short, the Church cannot reasonably expect the secular power to cough up the cash needed to proclaim the birth of a Saviour for whom the secular power has no love or time. Such a proclamation is rightly the calling and the work of the Church, and councils are just throwing off the last vestiges of Christendom when they decide to re-name Christmas, as Dundee Council seems keen to do.
We have been through this in Aberdeen, and every November or December there is a some new story about a Council somewhere that has decided to drop as many references as it possibly can to the ‘Christ’ part of Christmas, including the very word ‘Christmas’ itself. Instead, we are informed annually of some new name for that which the rest of us are still calling ‘Christmas’. In this case, Dundee Council seems to be desirous of re-branding Christmas as the Dundee Winter Light Night.
I can’t get angry about this. Sad, yes. But not angry. Better to be honest, in my opinion. If Dundee and its Councillors are not interested in celebrating Christ’s birth but still want to have a December holiday and a celebration – though quite what they want to celebrate in the absence of a celebration of the very incarnation of the Living God, I simply can’t guess – then let them go ahead and call the whole thing something that more accurately describes their real intention. That is, if Dundee Council really does think that it is only voicing the clear will of the people of the city. Has it asked the question?
Anyway, I am all for a bit of clear water between church and society. It helps the church to see what its real position is and where its real mission, power and authority lies.
However, instead of anger and protest to the Council, I wonder if a better way of responding to Dundee Council’s secularisation of Christmas might be for the brothers and sisters there to take matters entirely into their own hands, as the church of Christ in that city, and pull out all stops possible to let the City of Dundee know that Christians are celebrating Christmas and that the citizens of Dundee are most welcome to join them in rejoicing at the coming of the Holy One. Rather that than to expect the Council to take to itself the responsibility of telling its citizens the Christmas story.
So, the churches of Dundee could get together to leaflet every home and residence with a clear explanation of the Saviour’s birth. Open air services and carol services could be held. Congregations could build Nativity scenes in their church gardens and in front of their church buildings. Manses could be…… Advertising hoardings could be rented for super-sized Christmas posters declaring Messiah’s birth, a tactic at which churches in Perth have excelled.
Perhaps this is not a disaster after all, but a really marvellous, God-given opportunity.
Hang on! I’m starting to get excited. We ought to do this in Aberdeen, never mind Dundee!!
Soli Deo Gloria
Well done Louis for highlighting that as far as the church is concerned in accusing local authorities of abandoning sacred values it should remember the proverb about people in glass houses!
We in the church are hardly in a position to express sorrow that society is turning from the christian faith when we in the Church of Scotland have departed from so much that is fundamental to christianity. Indeed have we not been the ones who in the words of Isaiah have prepared the straight paths for the secularists of our day to go out and claim the minds of our generation.
How many from within the church who would find problems with Dundee City Council’s abandoning of ‘Christmas’ have already abandoned the belief that the wonder of Christmas is God became flesh and came and lived among us for a span? Far less that He appeared through the Virgin conception of Mary by the Holy Spirit!
All the best with your proposals for church action in Dundee and Aberdeen!
Hi Louis,
Great post, and thought-provoking. I like the idea of getting out of our pews and doing something active to celebrate the coming of Christ in the streets.
Maybe active not-shopping-for-stuff would be a start?
Grace and peace,
Ed
Excellent post, sir. I too am all for clear water between church and society.
However, your post is not very Presbyterian.
Christmas? Nativity scenes? Whatever would the Westminster Divines say?
Dear Young Mr Brown, the Westminster Divines probably would have said ‘No way!’ But Calvin might possibly have unwrapped a mince pie and said ‘this is entirely an indifferent matter.
Speaking of Calvin, you may or may not have come across the following fascinating historical nugget:
Top Ten Things that Calvin edited out of his Institutes just before publication of the 1536 edition:
10. Indulgent reference to King Francis I as a “Wine-swilling little Popemeister”
9. Book I’s lengthy outline of a 12-step program for counseling Adult Children of Codependent Pelagians
8. Dustjacket endorsement from J.I. Packer
7. His overused phrase “rootin’-tootin”
6. Perforated tear-out coupons for half-price pints at a popular Genevan alehouse
5. In the chapter on Common Grace in Book II, his argument for the lawfulness of Christian rock artists signing with secular recording labels
4. The scholarly footnotes by translator Ford Lewis Battles (fortunately rediscovered in 1960)
3. Photo insert of Calvin, decked in shades and a furry guitar shaped like Texas, impersonating ZZ Top bandmembers
2. The detailed outline of the rules for Lawn Bowling in his exposition on the fourth commandment
1. Gary North’s preface boasting, “Calvin’s Institutes will one day be as influential as Rushdoony’s Institutes. . . . “
Could it be that Dundee Council will be brave enough to exclude Santa Claus? I think not – that would really upset the masses!