The fascist activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon may have given some people hope yesterday, when he held a Christmas Service in London yesterday, the aim of which was “put the Christ back into Christmas”. I was not even aware that the Christ had disappeared from Christmas and that, presumably, we have been wishing each other a Merry Mas in the absence of the great man himself, but the simple fact that Yaxley-Lennon, who calls himself Tommy Robinson, is celebrating the birth of a Middle Eastern brown-skinned Jew stands for some kind of progress, right?
While I am an atheist, I do love Christmas. Not the religious bit, obviously, but the joyous quality time spent with family and friends means everything to me. And frankly I don’t need Little Stephen to put a much-loved, albeit fictional, character back into Christmas.
Few of the things I love about Christmas have anything to do with religion. Presents, the tree, getting pissed, watching too much telly are not, so far as I am aware, part of the holy bible, but then again, who cares? Christmas, as Talk Talk might have sung, is what you make it.
Yaxley-Lennon is obviously using Christmas in order to aid recruitment to his far right agenda. It’s essentially Christian Nationalism, the sort that is a plague on the house of America. The devout of the USA are invariably gun-toting, xenophobic, homophobic who, one presumes, believe that the supposed Jesus of Nazareth shared their views. If it turns out he does exist, my guess is that he is none of these things, otherwise I am definitely on my way to Hell when I shuffle off my mortal coil. A heaven that would welcome Yaxley-Lennon is not somewhere I will want to end up. I’ll settle for being worm food.
Yaxley-Lennon’s conversion to Christianity supposedly happened when he was in prison, where he spends a great deal of time. He used to “hate the church” but a pastor in prison taught him all about the bible. That’s weird, isn’t it? I’ve never believed in any of the available Gods, but I’ve never hated the church. I’ve hated some of the religious extremists, for sure, but if I look at our local church, for example, I just see amiable, well-meaning middle class people doing what they consider to be their duty. And, as I always say, for as long as the activities and actions of religious folk don’t affect my life in any form, I am from the Dave Allen school of “May your God go with you”.
If Yaxley-Lennon really has seen the light, I expect him to change his ways and embrace people of all faiths, cultures, colour and all the rest of it. I expect him to not fight people on the beaches, but to welcome those in small boats, for example, to our country and show them the love and care that Christ exhibited. That would be progress, wouldn’t it? Hopefully, he won’t go down the road of Charlie Kirk, the fanatical right-wing hate preacher, who was himself murdered not that long ago.
We know really that God and all the God type things, like Christmas, are being hijacked by fascist demagogues. The Christ will never leave Christmas, even as people continue to abandon religious belief. Mas will never catch on. May I be among the first to wish you and yours a Merry Christmas, whether you do God or not. You don’t need Stephen Yaxley-Lennon’s permission. Not yet, anyway.
