From a netfriend:

I went through the whole of the big shopping centre here and could not find one book on the Christmas story, for children … plenty on santa and also a story told by a donkey about a baby born in a stable one night but it was hardly even similar to the nativity story. One observation I made today was also that the shopping centre was quite bare of christmas decorations but the shops were quite happy to do the Christmas trade. There was a sort of contradiction there.

In a muslim country (Indonesia)… they have nativity scenes in shops with christmas carols playing … not just christmas songs, and that it was very evident that it was a christian celebration.

I really wonder (again) if we are going over the top with not wanting to upset other cultures etc. I still come back to the fact that we can live in harmony by acknowledging and respecting that there are different religions and cultures and allowing each to celebrate their special times. I do not recall Ramadan being banned in Australia nor do we ban Halloween or Greek New Year. It is a respect that some people do celebrate some things and others dont … and just cos we do celebrate them does not mean we are trying to convert anyone to our way of thinking which is a mutual respect too.

Maybe just as we have the Reclaim the Night march maybe we should be looking at ways to reclaim Christmas before it is lost even more so from calenders.