CMP Review 2024-12-23

December 23, 2024

“We have probably all heard the story of the belated shopper who was informed by the shop assistant, ‘There are no Christmas cards left, only Nativity scenes’. That this astonishing remark is not apocryphal is witnessed by another incident which has lately been in the news. It was proposed that a Crib should be set up under the Christmas Tree outside Belfast City Hall this year: the Crib has been vetoed in favour of a scene from Red Riding Hood. It is a sorrowful century in which a so-called Christian country rejects the Christmas gift and retains only the wrapping, and the only comment which meets so contradictory a situation is the remark made by Napoleon on his death-bed, ‘Stupidity fatigues me’.

“Fortunately we need not stop short at fatigue: whatever our religious denomination we know that Christmas without Christ is unthinkable and we can all, whatever our age and wherever we live, do something to ensure that the Christ Child is not excluded from His own Birthday Party.

“… Well, as Dickens himself pointed out, ‘It is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a Child himself’, and we can all chime in with the carols and we all claim the privilege of taking part in the crusade of giving children all over the world the Christmas Crib that their parents may have overlooked.” (Anne Jerningham, PR 70, 1959)

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