Session 4: The Culture of ChristmasThis is a featured page


Jack Kibble-White
In this final session, Jack Kibble White considered the messages we get about Christmas from television programming. The rituals and traditions about Christmas are often more important than plot in narrative specials, and there is now relatively little religious programming. Even though television may be seen as light entertainment, it has a big role and creates a sense of a national family, gathered around the hearth of the TV! Many values and ideas about what Christmas is about are learned here.

In the last presentation of the workshop, Angus Paddison asked the question: what does a theologian have to say about Christmas? While Christians may be concerned with the ‘real’ or spiritual message of Christmas, they are often unequipped to navigate the market in a way that fits with Christian values. The group discussed how it was possible to feel powerless at the political level to change the processes of consumption. Nevertheless, it might be possible to avoid fatalism and to develop a Christmas ethic which has an impact. It was suggested that the impulses of liberation theology might be revisited to see where the important issues on the global and local scale really lie.











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DamianSutton
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