Good generals know when it is time to give up an impossible defence and seek a more secure position to hold. It is time to give up Christmas. It is now utterly overrun by the combined forces of sentimentality, irreligion, bad manners and worse taste. I do not say that on ‘the day’, as it is now called, we shouldn’t mount the odd raid to attend church — though the same hostile forces have long been within its gates too, infantilising its liturgy, replacing its sacred music with ditties and recorders, and plastering its walls with the scrawlings and daubings...