Do They Know It's Christmas?

This BBC story about the fading English tradition of the nativity play caught my eye. Actually, England might be a bit behind the curve if their authorities are trying to deracinate their children by going to the trouble of entirely banning Christmas. This side of the Atlantic, the preferred tactic is to submerge the holiday in a sea of allegedly analogous festivals of other cultures. A friend was telling me that her kid's class has to celebrate the "season of festivals" by "doing presentations" on such vital December traditions as a Korean Doll Festival (the one her unlucky son had drawn from the gender-neutral hat)...in addition, no doubt, to Hannukah, Kwanzaa, etc. etc. and, somewhere down the list, the quaint story of a boy born in Bethlehem. So Christmas is not "banned" at all--how could anyone say that? Au contraire, my hysterical rightwing friends your Yule holiday is still very much in the picture, in much the same sense that "Where's Waldo" is.

A propos of my title, could it be that the battered old holiday needs a benefit concert of its own? "Banned Aid", maybe. Hmm...on second thought, maybe it's better to let the West die with dignity than to allow ourselves to be assaulted again by the versification of its latter-day poets, e.g.:

But say a prayer. Pray for the other ones
At Christmastime it's hard
But when you're having fun
There's a world outside your window
And it's a world of dread and fear
Where the only water flowing is the bitter sting* of tears.

*I guess this was meant to be "sting" with a lower-case "s" even though I think it was actually being sung by the upper-case, and possibly bitter, and wet, "Sting".