Joy of Christmas

I stumbled across it one December evening, a Christmas haven with not a strand of lametta, plastic holly leaf or red velvet reindeer with glitter antlers in sight.

It was the early 1990s and I was in Strasbourg to cover a conference of excruciating dullness. So I played hooky, losing myself in the medieval streets between the black-and-white timbered houses until I found myself in a crowded square.

Wooden stalls, strung with fairy lights, lined its perimeter, and braziers glowing fierce orange were scattered across it. The scent of cinnamon and cloves, escaping from wooden vats of mulled wine, kissed the cold air.

Church bells chimed periodically; I am sure carols were being played, and, yes, there were chestnuts roasting too. Every seasonal cliche was present and correct. My love affair with Christmas markets was instantaneous and enduring.

Back then, the markets were one of Europe’s best kept secrets. No-frills flying had yet to open up the Continent and a weekend jaunt was a costly affair. Now, for many of us, a trip to Cologne, Barcelona, Munich, Budapest, Prague or Lille, to buy the sort of decorations and craftwork we’re convinced we can’t buy anywhere else (although most are made in China), is part of the pre-Christmas ritual.

Even The Archers has endorsed it. Kenton and Kathy rejected the charms of Borchester last week to sip glühwein in front of Vienna’s imposing town hall, and potter around the nearby stalls.

Millions of listeners were probably wishing they were there, too. It is a world away from the brash, grasping materialism of the British high street at this time of year, and that is certainly part of the appeal of the markets.

The smaller ones, in Cracow or Salzburg for example, are also a reminder of a more innocent time in our lives. A time when the Christmas School Fayre or church bazaar was the social event of the year; when lopsided mince pies baked by mums were not considered to be a health hazard, and the headmaster with a stick-on cotton wool beard masquerading as Santa was not assumed to be a paedophile. Of course there is a commercial imperative to the Christmas markets but it is low-key and made more palatable by a combination of nostalgia and kitsch.

There is, I think, another reason why we have embraced Europe’s Christmas markets so wholeheartedly, and it is the unashamed display of a joyous Christian festival.

The tackiest of Nativity scenes, garish cribs, angels, Advent candles and calendars – of the religious variety rather than those with a Disney copyright – are piled high, with classier representations in glass, wood and porcelain. There is no expectation that a non-Christian will be offended by these offerings, and none seem to be. Indeed, the fact that so many of the markets take place in the shadow of great churches – the Gothic masterpiece known as the Angel of Strasbourg or the Cathedral of St Nicholas in Ljubljana – enhances the experience for those of all belief systems who are sensitised to the point of madness to “upsetting other faiths”.

In Britain we’re well-rehearsed in the “Winterval v Christmas” debate. We welcome the school Nativity play that has morphed into a hybrid celebration of Diwali, Hannukah, or Russian Orthodoxy. We may balk when we read that children’s choirs are banned from singing traditional carols in shopping malls, and that Santa has been replaced by a “more inclusive pixie” in a school in Brighton. But if the end result is a multicultural society at ease with itself, then so be it.

The galling reality is that the practitioners of other faiths don’t care how we celebrate. They accept the Christmas story as just that, an entertaining story. They consider the bank holidays that mark it to be a bonus, and think we’re mad to neuter our celebrations in the way we do. But we remain consumed by fear of causing offence, and the unthinking, politically correct, “Christianophobic” jobsworths who run our institutions are to blame.

And so we have the ludicrous situation reported this week whereby travellers to Bahrain – an Islamic country – find the airport fulsomely decorated for Christmas, with Santas in abundance, while O Come All Ye Faithful blasts from the duty-free electronics store. At Heathrow, there are minimal decorations and no carols in case Muslim passengers or airport employees are offended.

We like to think we invented Christmas. We didn’t, of course, but we mixed and matched the best bits from other countries with pagan midwinter practices and Christian traditions. Charles Dickens then consolidated the lot in A Christmas Carol, one of the great achievements of British culture, according to the critic D J Taylor. How sad it is that to get our seasonal fix, we now have to look elsewhere.