Stamp rage strikes again

The Royal Mail has a policy of alternating between religious and non-religious designs for its festive stamps. This year is a non-religious year, but that hasn’t stopped the Daily Express screaming that “Christ is dumped from Christmas stamps”, and phoning round the usual suspects for outraged “political correctness gone mad” quotes.

Here is a selection from yesterday’s paper:

A Church of England Spokesman:

Last year they came up with some very innovative designs which reminded people of the true meaning of Christmas, so we welcomed it.

We regret that they haven’t carried on. I am sure lots of Christians will regret that they haven’t carried on in the same way as well.

The True Meaning of Christmas? That’s not really what you want, Rev.

Tory MP David Burrowes:

It is a great shame that they are treating it as just another secular festival, because we have enough of those throughout the year.

Such as? Easter, Ramadan, Diwali…

Stephen Crabb, another Tory MP:

Removing faith from Christmas is to neuter it as a festival.

It simply becomes a festival of materialism and that is not what it was meant to be about. I am dismayed and disappointed by the decision of the Royal Mail.

Aww.

Dr Christina Baxter, from the Archibshop’s Council of the General Synod:

I am deeply disappointed and I think a large majority of people in this country will also regret the Royal Mail’s decision.

Doubtful.

And Stephen “Dog Shit” Green, of Christian Voice:

They probably did it to avoid causing offence to some – but I for one am deeply offended by this.

Every cloud…

Last year it was a group of Hindus who indulged in a bit of stamp rage, and forced the Royal Mail to withdraw a stamp featuring a Hindu couple “worshipping” the Baby Jesus.

Next year the Royal Mail should give Muslims the opportunity to display some pious outrage. It’s only fair.


11 Responses to “Stamp rage strikes again”

  1. Andrew Nixon says:

    Next year the Royal Mail should give Muslims the opportunity to display some pious outrage. It’s only fair.

    Might I suggest smokey bacon flavoured stamps?

  2. NoJags Neil says:

    Andrew Nixon, you owe me a new keyboard, you bastard.

  3. Tiger Dunc says:

    Dear Dr Baxter

    With regards to your comment “A large majority of the people in this country will also regret the Royal Mail’s decision”, I have to inform you that in my humble opinion, I think you’ll find that a majority of people in this country don’t give a shit. Now go away and do something useful!

  4. sconzey says:

    Um… Specifically, “Christmas” is a Christian festival, so the true meaning of Christmas is the one the Christian forefathers assigned to a number of stolen pagan traditions (such as the exchange of gifts, decoration of a tree, but I’m sure you know all this already)

    If you want to celebrate something else at the same time of year, that’s fair enough.

    The point I’m trying to make is that the true meaning of the winter festival, is whatever you’re celebrating… Royal Mail have merely put on the cards the things that most people celebrate: i.e. not the birth of a great moral teacher, not the winter solstice, not saturnalia, but idols of snow, and a fat dutch pervert.

    I mean… An old man, coming into little children’s rooms at night, and putting things in their socks, that’s just *creepy*.

  5. davblog says:

    Stamp Rage…

    Oh, this is all just too silly…….

  6. Andy A says:

    ‘I am dismayed and disappointed by the decision of the Royal Mail’ – Stephen Crabb, my Tory MP (Preseli Pembrokeshire, 32-ish, dark-haired, hunky and sexy-looking in pictures, married with two kids, done some rugby), wot I voted for because NuFekkingLabour need dangling by their bollocks by red-hot barbed wire.

    Anyway …

    Well, Stephen, old chap, I’m not dismayed by your attitude, but am a bit disappointed, although I knew your credentials.

    I’m afraid that Stephen, although, so far, a good constituency MP (with a healthy disregard – if I read between the lines of correspondence from him to a friend) for the potential Muslim takeover of good ol’ Christian Britain, is a Christian of the rather overt variety, and a member of the Christian Parliamentary group thingy.

    But, for what it’s worth, here’s my four penn’orth as an atheist. I don’t mind Christ in Christmas. I don’t mind the absence of Christ in Christmas, either. Christ, like Mithras, has been around in the collective consciousness long enough for us to say he’s a tradition. There are so many things we celebrate that also have Christian origins, such as when we depict the Devil in anything we do. I really don’t mind. I do call it Christmas (apart from anything else, it’s easier to say, with less explaining to do, than talking of Winterval or some such Labour- or LibDem-run, council-inspired PC bullshit). I don’t go along with the woolly-liberal PC thing of not calling it Christmas just because it might offend Muslims, Hindus and other guest religions. If this country has come from, or owes its current state to, any religious foundation at all it’s Christianity, and I’d rather do battle with Rowan Williams than Marmalade Armour Dinnerjacket or his mullah nutter leader Hi I Tol’ Ya Car Mendy, the well-known mechanic, who are almost as dangerous as NuFekkingLabour, although the latter might stop at hanging teenagers in public because it wouldn’t go down well with the spin doctors. I thik you can (and many do) refer to it as Christmas (or Crimbo) without forgetting the pagan origins that the Christians papered over.

  7. Ricky Smith says:

    Andy, are you pissed?

  8. Kate says:

    I await with bated breath, the campaign to ensure that nobody sends Christmas cards carrying pictures of Father Christmas, robins, snow, trees, stars or stockings. All cards should have pictures of baby Jesus. Not to do so would be double standards afterall…

  9. Marc Draco says:

    I’ve got some spare ones from Mike Kipling Photography (strictly limited edition) with a snowed up postbox. No one could be offended by that – could they?

  10. Tiger Dunc says:

    Andy – I’ll have a large one of whatever you are drinking (or otherwise taking into your bloodstream). Whilst I’m waiting though, I’d like to pick some nits by pointing out that the Judeo – Christian version of the devil is nothing original at all, but is largely a pick and mix version of old paganistic beliefs from Egypt, Persia, Greece Rome and pretty much anywhere else you can imagine. Even our idea of him as being a cloven hoofed biped with a tail and horns is just a version of the Greek Pan. Satan/Lucifer/Old Nick etc, like all Christianity, is borrowed en masse from older, largely forgotten religions.

  11. Sam says:

    I suppose when Royal Mail do religious stamps next year, the Daily Mail and the like will be encouraged that there campaigns had an effect, causing them to have a even bigger moan about it in 2008.