FATHER CHRISTMAS ASSAILED
"OBSCURING MEANING OP FESTIVAL" "One of the most pleasing features to the Editor of the present Christmas season is the rebuff that some of the big shops have administered to 'Father Christmas,'" says the "Church News." "There have been so many commercial representations of this well-meaning person in recent years that to draw trade to their toy department they hav e substituted other attractions. This is all to the good from the Christian point of view, for no one who has to do with the teaching of children, and especially of little children, can be unaware of the almost complete obscuration of Christmas by the gross—the appropriated, significantly gross—scarlet-clad body of Father Christmas. "Christmas-tide means to the average child not the coming of God s Son into the world, but the arrival of Father Christmas. Sundav school children know that the Nativity is celebrated on December 25 but they treat it as a mere coincidence, and if they are touched, as they often are. they keep it in a watertight compartment. "It surelv is time that Christians should deliberately exnlode the commercialised myth of Father Christmas even for little children and restore the festival to its Christian use by dwelling on the Nativitv and leave Santa Claus to the paganised nominals.'"
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Bibliographic details
Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21355, 24 December 1934, Page 12
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214FATHER CHRISTMAS ASSAILED Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21355, 24 December 1934, Page 12
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