Down with the PC Puritans! Politically Correct Zealots Must Not Be Allowed to Destroy the True Wonder of Christmas, Writes THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY

CHRISTMAS was last under attack about 350 years ago. That was during Oliver Cromwell's Commonwealth - the only time Britain has had a military dictatorship-The problem then was that Christmas wasn't Christian enough.

The Puritans of that age were disgusted by the fact that Christmas was an excuse for parties and games. It wasn't even in the Bible, they complained - no one could know the real date of Jesus's birth, so there couldn't be anything special about December 25.

So the festival was made illegal.

You could be punished for celebrating Christmas Day. As a boy, I had a history book with very lively pictures and I can remember the illustration of Roundheads breaking into a house and carrying off a Christmas pudding, with the family in tears in the background.

The dictators of those days thought that Christmas was too human - too mixed up with people enjoying themselves, nothing to do with being faithful to the Bible. But the banning of Christmas didn't last long because human …

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Publication information: Article title: Down with the PC Puritans! Politically Correct Zealots Must Not Be Allowed to Destroy the True Wonder of Christmas, Writes THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY. Contributors: Not available. Newspaper title: The Mail on Sunday (London, England). Publication date: December 18, 2005. Page number: 21. © 2009 Solo Syndication Limited. COPYRIGHT 2005 Gale Group.

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