Parents are quite right to reject the sanitised Christmas tableau. It bears no relationship to the gritty and unsettling story found in the Bible, which is in itself quite unsuitable for children. It involves inter-generational marriage, pregnancy out of wedlock, traveling long distances only to be rejected from bottom-of-the-pile accommodation, childbirth in squalid conditions, infanticide on a large scale, flight into refugee accommodation, visitation by strange men bearing ominous gifts, and generally hanging around with the scum of the earth.
Now, if a sanitised vision of Christmas cheer is under threat in schools, then I say good riddance. It does irreparable harm because it represents an impossibly idealised vision of human happiness. This time of year can be a pit of misery for many of us, and having to put a happy face on it only makes things worse. Most of the non-religious carols we sing seem to be about a winter wonderland, which is strange given the general lack of snow at this time of year. There are Australian Christmas carols, but who has the time to teach them in the age of NAPLAN?
Where I have a problem is the premise that sacred and secular are eternally separated spheres of influence. This is patently not the case, as the presence of figures in our public life from Tony Abbott through to Peter Jensen and Jim Wallace demonstrates. There is a predominance of a particular sort of religiosity among public figures, and this is a problem. The main public face of religion at the moment is a very rigid and antagonistic one, and it can be very hard for people to see that this is not the end of the story. Certain people get away with bandying around punitive ideas ‘because the Bible says so’ only because the majority of people don’t have the wherewithal to question it right to the very bottom. This is very bad news for women, for gay people, indeed, for anyone who does not enjoy white hetero male privilege. Unsurprisingly, it was the equivalent of the white hetero males of around 2,000 years ago who strang up some peasant from Galilee.
As far as Bible teaching and religious education in schools goes, I’d say parents are absolutely right to run for cover when religion is used as a tool for ideology. But they owe it to their children to see that they are culturally literate enough to be able to recognise the misuse of religion. Religious illiteracy only makes it easier for the pious quacks to make converts and build influence. They owe it to their children to make sure that they have enough of a handle to be able to beat the next generation of public fundamentalists of the world over the head with it.
The good news of Christmas is that in the middle of all the messiness of our lives we’re not cut off from something greater. What you call — or don’t call — that something doesn’t matter so much.
