Church plans 'Christmas' campaign

Cardinal Keith O'Brien stressed the importance of the nativity scene

The Catholic Church is to mount a national campaign urging Scotland's councils to remember the Christian message in their festive celebrations.

Local authorities will be asked to ensure that they include the word Christmas on their greetings cards.

The church is planning to write to every council before they plan next year's celebrations.

It also wants them to include a nativity scene as part of their festive displays.

Cardinal Keith O'Brien has called on Scots to resist the rising tide of "secularisation," with a particular reference to the celebration of Christmas.

The "re-Christianisation" of Scotland is one of his goals following his appointment as a cardinal.

Christmas displays

Speaking at a national mass last month, he congratulated those councils which had created nativity scenes.

"I would ask each and every council and community in Scotland to consider doing likewise," he said.

"Aware of the remembrance memorials which are the focus of our prayer on Remembrance Sunday and aware also of the ways in which considerable sums of money are spent on Christmas displays, I think it only appropriate that there be a nativity scene at the centre of the celebrations of each of our communities.

The church is concerned that the Christian message is being forgotten

"Without this there is left a gaping hole at the heart of the season of goodwill."

This year has also seen controversy over the Scottish Parliament's greetings card, which omitted the word Christmas.

However, it did include the Gaelic phrase for Merry Christmas.

A spokesman for the Catholic Church told BBC News Online that this kind of "mixed message" seemed to be a common approach.

He acknowledged that it was too late to affect what was happening this year.

But he said: "What we will aim to do is come back to this issue in the middle of next year.

"We will probably send a letter to every local authority and the parliament at the stage when people are ordering and designing things like Christmas cards.

But I earnestly hope that... we won't unthinkingly follow the Americans in lumping all these festivals together in a bland generic blob called 'the holidays' Very Rev Dr James A Simpson

"If we plan it far enough ahead there should be no excuse for people not getting it right next year."

Concerns that the Christian message is being forgotten over the festive period have also been voiced by the Church of Scotland.

Writing in Life and Work magazine, former moderator Very Rev Dr James A Simpson argued against the American trend for substituting the term Happy Holidays for Happy Christmas.

"I am well aware that the church does not have exclusive ownership of the festive season, that it is also the season of Hanukkah, Eid al-Fitr, the winter solstice and family gatherings," he wrote.

"I am all for giving each of these religious and cultural festivals their due.

"But I earnestly hope that on this side of the Atlantic we won't unthinkingly follow the Americans in lumping all these festivals together in a bland generic blob called 'the holidays'."