This exchange may go some way to explain the tragicomic results of recent research.
A survey of 2,000 UK families carried out in early December showed that a third of children aged 10-13 do not know that Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus.
It’s shocking but hardly surprising, as Christ has been progressively removed from Christmas.
But the problem does not concern just kids. According to the same survey, half the population considers Jesus’s birth irrelevant to their Christmas celebrations, and only 1 adult in 10 can correctly state 4 facts about the Nativity.
Therefore, it’s safe to assume that the children just reflect the ignorance and disinterest of their parents.
The research was commissioned by the campaign group Christmas Starts With Christ. Francis Goodwin, a campaigner for the group, said: “There is a problem with political correctness in schools. They think they should not focus on the Christian roots of Christmas because of inclusivity.”
Schools are becoming so “inclusive” that many of them are not putting on Nativity plays for fear of offending people of different religions, and this survey shows in very clear, ominous terms the consequences of that trend.
Then there is the research conducted by the online parenting group Netmums, which found that only 1 in 3 schools are staging a traditional Nativity play this month.
The research also unearthed that schools these days prefer to stage modern musicals instead. Almost half of them now perform “modernised” Christmas shows with footballers - which could explain the results of another survey, below - and punk fairies in place of the shepherds, Mary, Joseph and Baby Jesus. 1 in 8 school plays will have no religious references at all, but only eco-warriors or aliens or Elvis.
If we don’t stand up for Christianity, the religion that has given birth to and sustained the West will disappear from our lands. We, or our descendants, might discover that this loss spells the end of Western civilization, as an infinite number of signs already indicate.
Another survey was conducted a few days ago at London’s Brent Cross Shopping Centre, a veritable pre-Christmas nightmarish place. The association of Christmas with shopping persists. This is most incongruous, as the materialism and acquisitiveness of which Christmas has become the expression is totally at odds with the Christian message.
In this research, more than half of 5-to-12-year-olds thought that Christmas Day is Santa Claus' birthday.
A total of 1,000 children at Brent Cross were shown an iconic image of Jesus and told that it portrayed Jesus.
Then they were asked: who is Jesus Christ?
The options were:
a) A footballer for Chelsea
b) Son of God
c) TV presenter
d) X Factor contestant
e) An astronaut.
20 per cent of the children chose a), Chelsea player.
The presence, described above, of footballers in schools' Nativity plays "made relevant" to the present day could bear some responsibility for creating this confusion in kids.
It gives an entire new meaning to “Jesus saves”, as Alex Boot shows in the satirical title of his post.
f) a monkey, just in case you imagined there weren't a war on Christmas.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zUvFaW3WY0
What children learn or don’t learn at home matters first. No doubt school is a major influence on children but the breakdown of traditional family and the subsequent abandonment of faith has done the most damage. Even so these are only outward symptoms of a deeper decay. The root cause of Christianity in crisis, and thus Western Civilization, comes from being under attack from within. Christ Himself predicted this inevitable dissolution. Compromise and acquiescence to modernity to ‘stay relevant with evolving culture’ has done more to destroy the faith than any other trick Satan has used. Those who are most influential, who have position and voice within the ranks of Christian leadership are accountable.
ReplyDelete“It is a law of the human soul that people tend to become like that which they admire most intensely. Deep and long continued admiration can alter the whole texture of the mind and heart and turn the devotee into something quite other than he was before. For this reason it is critically important that we Christians should have right models. It is not enough to say that our model should be Christ. While that is true, it is also true that Christ is known mostly through the lives of His professed followers, and the more prominent and vocal these followers are the more powerful will be their influence upon the rank and file of Christians. If the models are imperfect the whole standard of Christian living must suffer as a result.” - A.W. Tozer
As you say, the external attacks can be recognized as such and can be defended against. Léon de Poncin chronicled the more devastating insider attacks to the Church's doctrine.
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