I found this an interesting article. I recall the time some years ago when we celebrated Christmas with the Kids Club in the Uniting Church in an industrial suburb of Perth. My wife rewrote the Nativity play giving it a local setting. The Church Hall was packed with folk who didn't usually come to worship. Blokes turned up in shorts, singlets and thongs with their tinnies and smokes, which they decided to leave outside and joined in the evening celebration. For them it was the ordinary that really got them talking about the reality of the time. You should have seen the girls putting on their dance and song!

Christmas is a pagan holiday and always will be. The early Christians
Co-oped the date because people were already doing the gift/ new life thing on this date in Europe.
Modern Australian Xmas season had very little to do with Christmas, sure many of us have a cultural back ground of Christian mythology around Christmas, less of us about the Islamic and Jewish. And even less of us about the pagan roots of the date.
However what just about all of us do have and the main reason why we do celebrate Xmas is gift giving and family time based around the made up story of the coca cola father Christmas.
I don’t know a single person who does celebrate Xmas but I know plenty that don’t celebrate Christmas

International surveys show that Australians are more excited about Christmas than comparable nations.

Yes well, some of our multicultural societies, here in our Christian country are doing their damnedest to change this.

Given time I fear they will succeed.

Kenny,

In so far as Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus of Nazareth whenever that was, how can it be a pagan celebration? I think you are referring to the date, viz, 25 December. That may well have been although refer http://touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=16-10-012-v. Come to think of it some of our days of the week are named after pagan gods. I do not hear anyone yelling to change the names of our week-days.

"I do not hear anyone yelling to change the names of our week-days."

Nobody's yelling to change the name of Christmas. But whatever you want to call it, midwinter religious celebrations were going on throughout Europe long before the arrival of Christianity.

Another attempt to bring Christmas back as a religious festival. It will be tough going, on this evidence.

"Australians have a love affair with Christmas... Average households here will spend $1,055 each this Christmas, based on all expenses including gifts, food and decorations"

Hmmmm. So, the measure used in the "extensive six-nation study by top research firm, CoreData" is dollars spent.

An interesting metric for a love affair. That would put Geoffrey Edelsten in the top ten Australian romantics, for sure.

"We know the retailers are pushing Christmas pretty hard, but even that does not explain its peculiar popularity"

Beg pardon? Surely, that explains a heck of a lot. Or at least, it is the only measurable variable, given the rest of the article is pretty empty of anything factual..

"When Paul Hogan said in Crocodile Dundee, 'I read the bible once'..."

Errr... Crocodile Dundee was a movie. It had scriptwriters. This would only have substance if you also believe that you could bring a buffalo to its knees by pointing two fingers at it.

"However it's not just the longing for transcendence..."

Those folk with the eskies at the carol concert are not there for a singalong then, belting out the familiar tunes of their childhood while knocking back a bevvy or two? They "long for" transcendence.

Well, it's a theory, I guess.

But I'm afraid this is where the article trips over its own over-enthusiasm.

"Australians love outsiders and outcasts."

The fact that "Australians" have spent the entire year finding every means possible to stop "outsiders and outcasts" from landing on our precious shores clearly hasn't made an impact on the author's consciousness.

No, we are not only a long way from turning Christmas into a religious celebration, we are speeding in the opposite direction at a fairly constant rate.

But a holiday is a holiday, and we don't really need much of an excuse here in our beautiful country to spend time in the sun with our friends, do we.

Which is entirely as it should be. Happy Christmas everyone.