December 2003
by Barry Stagg
Have we really reached the point where the ordinary celebrations and traditions of Canadians must be relegated to secret ceremonies and public apologies? Is it now bad manners or, horror of sophisticated horrors, politically incorrect to wish each other a very Merry Christmas? Well, if it is, then here goes a deliberate and pre-meditated assault on all such fatuous bilge.
Firstly, I wish every one of my family, friends, acquaintances, colleagues, casual contacts and everyone else an extremely Merry Christmas and, in a true excess of subversive intention, I also deliberately attempt to inflict upon the same targets a positively prosperous and happy New Year. I await the charges and the inevitable bail hearing, a process with which I am thoroughly familiar. However, I warn you zealous secularist prosecutors, the courts are in on the alleged conspiratorial act because they simply will not be working Christmas Day or even on Boxing Day, the present feast day of that alternate god, Mammon.
This December is one where the so-called traditions of our time seem to point more to condemnation of our democratic practices and, particularly our military conventions in this part of the world, identified generally and somewhat imprecisely as Western democracy. Many of the pious in our midst spend far more time indicting the American government for daring to attack its sworn enemies than they devote toward opposition to barbaric brutes who direct captured airliners into office towers. This brings me to the topic of faith.
To those familiar with me and my writings, faith may seem an unusual topic but then again the sentimentality expressed two paragraphs ago should already have shocked them, so given their temporary state of helplessness, be it in the form of outrage or mirth, I feel emboldened to press on against them, no matter what the cost.
Faith in the goodness of our chosen system of life is an element vital to the health and durability of democracy. Where religion is scorned by the modernists, nevertheless it must be accepted that faith in the goodness of our Western ways is a form of religion, a faith that will allow us to transcend the self-loathing posturing of our liberal intelligentsia. I believe that as time goes on, each of us, healthy but aging, realize that believing in something of significance is essential. Because our open system of relative freedoms does not demand an orthodoxy of faith- no doctrinaire party line- we are slower to faith, easing into it as a subordinate feeling, perhaps almost as if it were a subversive act. Faith is not subversive to our Western democratic ideals. Malcolm Muggeridge realized this and said, somewhat ominously: ''Our civilization, after all, began with the Christian revelation, not the theory of evolution, and, we may be sure, will perish with it ,too-if it has not already." The masterful Muggeridge essay 'The Great Liberal Death Wish' goes on to confront this subject in far more incisive terms than I even dare attempt here.
In dramatic terms, though no more sublime, the Irish playwright Samuel Beckett too staked out his position on the elemental humanity of faith: "I can't go on. I'll go on." We must accept that the unseen hand throughout our unique mixture of freedom and order is our very real, absolutely essential, faith in the durable strength of our democratic civilization.
Consider this: Would embattled, desperately poor and oppressed migrants choose to tolerate foreign customs like Christmas and Santa Claus in exchange for safety, freedom and prosperity? Every year the tide of migrants to Canada answers with an unequivocal "yes".
Democracy lasts. Merry Christmas to all.
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