Stamp Them Out

‘ANYONE who, like us, has just received a Christmas card from last year will have noticed the stamp.

Merry Christmas one and all

The stamp’s picture of a pissed-up teenager vomiting in the gutter on Christmas Eve is seasonal and traditional, but it is not what the Church of England was hoping for.

And, as the Times says, the Church has been pondering the rights and wrongs of such images at its General Synod in York.

The conclusion it has reached is that the Royal Mail is the font of all evil and has been taking the Christ out of Christmas by producing unreligious stamps.

The CoE is now demanding that the Royal Mail produces Christian stamps to affix to our seasonal cards or else…the clerics will be very, very displeased.

Dr Christian Baxter, principal of St John’s Theological College, says: “Christmas is a Christian festival and the most important one at that.

“We are asking for a religious stamp every year for Christmas.”

Well, a stamp would make nice change from a jumper and pair of socks.

And Timothy Royle, representing the Gloucester Diocese, concurs.

“Other faiths should be able to celebrate their own festivals,” he says, “but Christmas is fundamentally a Christian event here.”

However, things will have to wait a while yet, since the Telegraph reports that this coming season’s stamps are once more based on a secular theme – so the next set of stamps with a Christian theme will not be released until 2005.

Which means the members of the Synod should see their campaign bear fruit sometime in 2009 – when their cards and good wishes from 2005 finally arrive…’

Posted: 13th, July 2004 | In: Broadsheets Comment | TrackBack | Permalink