"And So, This Is Christmas..."

This was too depressing to post yesterday, on Christmas Day, but important enough to still note while the spirit of the season remains upon us...

What has Christmas become, in parts of the world overtaken by - wait for it - politically correct liberalism? In a word - terrifying:

When my daughter stumbled, clambering on to the sleigh, Santa reached out and grabbed hold of her: an instinctive reaction, something we all might do. ....it was the look on Santa's face when he realised what he'd done that chilled to the marrow: a look, according to my wife, of pure, blind panic and fright. "I'm really, really, sorry for touching her," he mumbled. "I didn't mean to. I thought she might fall." This is where we are now.

A couple of years back, in Cairns, another Santa was sacked from his grotto in a department store for having said "Ho, ho, ho" to the children waiting before him. According to the store, he should have said "Ha, ha, ha" but he was a Bad Santa. "Ho, ho, ho" might be perceived as being derogatory to women, it was strongly argued....This is where we are now.

In my lovely old home town of Guisborough, in Cleveland, they used to have Santa on a sleigh riding through the part-cobbled old market high street, dispensing sweets to the kids. Not any more. The insurance monkeys and the health and safety monkeys got together and decided that it would cost about US$30,000 in future to safeguard and insure such an event. So of course it was stopped. This is where we are,etc....

A Santa Claus working at Selfridges department store in London was sacked this year for having invited an elderly woman to sit on his lap. I do not know what the elderly woman was doing in the queue for the grotto but, of course, it is her right to queue up to meet Santa and get a present...But you shouldn't have to put up with an outrage such as being invited to sit on Santa's lap, so Santa was sacked. A statement from Selfridges read: "We do not promote or proactively seek lap-sitting." Read that quote again and try to imagine the sort of person who wrote it...

In the north of England a boy was not allowed to attend his school's Christmas party because his parents had insisted, that he should not be required to attend lessons in religious education...The boy's mum, Dawn Riddell, was incandescent at the cruelty inflicted on her poor son. Christmas parties, she said, "have got absolutely nothing to do with Jesus". I think that's one of my favourite quotes of this year or any year. And that's where we are now, too.....

..it would seem to be the logical consequence of an agenda driven by the liberal middle-class Left over the past 30 years, in which the common denominator is the yearning for an artificial world that is entirely risk-free. Certainly there must be no risk to life or limb....no risk that anyone's sensibilities might be offended, no matter how thin their skins may have become over the years. It is an aspiration towards a pretend world, a confection every bit as make-believe as Santa's grotto.

Still, have a good Christmas now. And remember: it's got absolutely nothing to do with Jesus.

Depressing. While most of these tales of Christmas horror are from across the seas, remember that these are the societies that the Obamaphiles look to as an example of the direction America should be headed. And remember, once they take power in just over three weeks, armed with an imaginary mandate and a frightfully real Democratic-controlled Congress, there is no one to stand in their way.

Sleep well, with sugar plums dancing, etc....