Bob: Christmas is banned... again?

As if.

Every single year we're told this. And every time it's rubbish.

I know from previous letters to the Worcester News that some people don't like it very much when people actually respond to anything the Bishop of Worcester writes. But Bishop John Inge is one of the proponents of this year's version of the Christmas-is-banned myth (Bishop's Diary, 3 December) when he repeats the widespread condemnation of Oxford Council for "banning" Christmas.

Actually all that happened is that a charity who are hosting a two month long festival - in a pluralistic city spanning a time of year with numerous religious festivals in it, and in which they hope to involve a lot of lights, in the middle of winter - decided to call the whole shebang the Winter Light Festival. The Oxford Council made it abundantly clear that this was not some kind of institutional attack on Christmas. Nevertheless self-victimising worriers who recycle press releases in their columns up and down the country conspired together to leave out the bit where the deputy leader of the council said that the charity's approach "sends out a problematic message" and furthermore "It is the charity's festival. Among councillors there is certainly no desire to downgrade the importance or the prominence given to Christmas."

See, he even used the supposedly banned C-word himself!

The notion that secularists are somehow instigating a War on Christmas is absurd.

What is clearly the case, however, I'll readily admit, is that some of the overtly Christian stuff is getting forgotten by a good majority of Britons; people who are either non-practicing in their nominal Christianity, or are religious but non-Christian, or who live life entirely religion-free.

But that doesn't mean the Christmassy spririt of human empathy and love has gone anywhere. Children are still told that loving each other and understanding one another are central to the cosy feeling of Christmas (in every Christmas Special on telly it turns out that they can only save Christmas if they work together and love each other rather than loving their presents). And we can spread this message merely on the basis of appealing to our shared humanity. Angels and shepherds are not strictly necessary.

No one is trying to stop Christians from doing Christmas as religiously as they like, though. Personally, I'd rather play in the snow than worship the sky; I'd rather visit my friends than remember old stories; I'd rather read the book I've been given than listen to a sermon. But whatever - do it how you want to do it.

The rest of us, though, don't have to endlessly re-tell the myth that an ancient Nazarene got born in a stable to a virgin. Yes, funnily enough, some of us don't think that that particular story is relevant to us, or to Christmas, and that in fact that story only diverts from the most wonderful of our seasonal feelings. That's what really scares the bishops and the other fretting columnists: There has always been a winter festival, and there always will be, and we can go right on calling it Christmas, because it doesn't actually matter what it's called. The message is deeper and more fundamentally human than any particular mythology of any passing religion can admit.

Bishop Inge says "The fact is that there is not that much to celebrate about winter except dark and cold". Rubbish. Here's a very Christmassy phrase: "love of fellow man". That goes on, there to celebrate throughout the dark and cold, whatever your beliefs.

This Christmas time, let's work out what's actually important. It's not receiving the next great gadget from a rich Aunty, no. And it's not dredging up bits of any particular mythology, either. What's really important - in Christmas at its most Christmassy - is the welling up of empathy and love in the human heart for one and all.

This Christmas, just be good for goodness' sake.