We've all chosen to take the Christianity out of Christmas

CHRISTMAS is coming, and a familiar sound begins to be heard in the land: no, not the honking of fat geese, nor the ringing of a million tills, but the loud wail of Britain's increasingly vocal Christian right, complaining that their faith is being deliberately marginalised from British public life.

On Thursday, for example, the Conservative MP Mark Pritchard sponsored a debate in Westminster Hall about what he calls "Christianophobia", or the growing reluctance of British society to pay any respect to the 1500-year history and tradition of Chri...