WeeklyWorker

11.12.2025
Peak retail

The meaning of Christmas

A money-making opportunity for sure, but there is politics too. The far right in particular have taken up Christianity with a vengeance. Then there is Jesus, the real, historical Jesus, the revolutionary Palestinian executed by the Roman occupiers. Jack Conrad investigates

Christmas is the peak retail in the UK. Roughly 30% of personal expenditure happens over the festive season.1 Despite squeezed incomes, stubborn inflation and continued worries about the future, consumers are expected to spend a record £91.12 billion over Christmas (mainly on food and drink, presents and holidays). Up by some 3.2% on last year - though for the first time since 2023 sales volumes are predicted to fall by 0.3%. The explanation for the minor shrinkage is straightforward: while some 9.8% of UK consumers say they are “considerably better off” in 2025, 12.6% say there are “significantly worse off” and the remaining 64.3% consider themselves either “about the same” or “slightly worse off”.2

Meanwhile, the wealthiest splash out on trifles such as Harrods crackers (£700), Loro Piana cashmere baubles (£1,800 for half-a-dozen), a turkey lunch at the Ritz (£650 per head) and, for the little darlings, a private Santa grotto (from £5,000). And for those with money to burn, what about a Martin Chiffers’ Christmas pudding, made from rare Iranian Ajwa dates, Marma almonds, 200-year-old Duret cognac, Perez Barquero Solera 1905 sherry, and 1834 Whitaker Marsala wine? All with silver thruppence coins, and, for extra luck, a gold Henry VI Salut d’Or (£23,000).3

The average Christmas spend per person therefore works out at £1,371.44 (note, for the statistically challenged, that does not mean the average person’s spend - that is expected to be £219.08 in 2025). Spending on cosmetics is set to rise by 6% - the biggest growth category, reflecting a shift to influencer-driven online purchases. However, as might easily be predicted, it is the iPhone 17, Nintendo Switch 2, the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra and other such expensive electronic gizmos that remains the biggest category.

Because it is such a money-spinner, Christmas begins early. For retailers, especially in the Anglosphere, the season starts in earnest with the onset of October. They send out catalogues and emails. Adverts and marketing strategies are finalised. The Christmas lights get switched on in mid-November and sales steadily rise till that final orgy of bargain-hunting: the winter sales.

Christmas is also peak charity. Christian Aid, Oxfam, Unicef, Crisis, the Red Cross, Shelter, etc make an almost military push to secure donations, a good portion of which goes to pay for the costs of the staff needed (chief executive salaries of £175k+ being an industry norm4).

Those who want to “rediscover the true meaning of Christmas” respond in their millions. After all, ’tis the season of “peace and goodwill to all men”.5 According to the Charities Aid Foundation, some 40% of the adult population are more likely to make a donation in December … with a monthly £2.03 average increasing to £2.41. That little uptick does, however, when totalled, add up to millions of pounds.

Christmas Eve is peak church too. Turnout for C of E services is around two million - far ahead of the 693,000 Sunday average and even Easter.6 While not quite being on a par in religious terms with Easter, Christmas comes a close second. Jesus rising from the dead being rated over having been conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary.

Census and state

True, as revealed by the 2021 census, the number of self-proclaimed Christians has fallen to less than half the population in England and Wales. Heading the list of other religions there were Muslims on 6.5% (up from 4.9% in 2011). We, the godless, have, though, risen to 37.2% - 22 million up from the 14.8% in 2011. Figures which not only caused much rightwing handwringing, but a determined Christian nationalist pushback. The country has lost its identity, they say, and is falling to the forces of ‘wokism’, ‘Cultural Marxism’, whatever that is, and ‘invading’ hordes of Muslims.

The playbook comes straight from the US Republican right, and there is plenty of finance available. Indeed the Trump administration has been egging on the far right in Europe, not least in Britian, where because of a shared language there are particularly close business, cultural and personal connections.

Perhaps the New Conservatives headed the pushback - till, that is, they went down to an eviscerating defeat with the 2024 general election. The baton being taken up in no uncertain terms by Reform UK and the likes of Danny Kruger and James Orr. Both evangelical Christians.

Kruger, the MP for East Wiltshire who defected from the Tories in September, believes a Christian revival is essential if the country’s moral decline is to be reversed. He wants to replace the prevailing liberal ‘social contract’ with a ‘new social covenant’, based on family, community and nation.7 Instead of individualism and the free market there is The Order, based on tradition, hierarchy, community and transcendent truths. Kruger converted to Christianity in his 20s after reading CS Lewis (no, not The chronicles of Narnia).

Orr is a Cambridge academic, a theologian and a philosopher, who upholds the anti-liberal, anti-democratic teachings of Roger Scruton. He has close links with US vice-president JD Vance, who describes him as his “British sherpa”.8 In the name of Christianity Orr opposes abortion under all circumstances and calls asylum-seekers “invaders”.9 In October 2025 he was appointed a senior advisor to Nigel Farage.

Another devout Christian is Paul Marshall, hedge fund owner of GB News, unHerd and the Spectator, who is also said to “own the right”.10 Though not formally a Reform member, his TV station provides an unequalled platform for Nigel Farage (along with fat payments worth hundreds of thousands of pounds). Four nights a week Farage gets to present his hour-long show, where he talks directly to potential voters. So the evening after Keir Starmer’s speech to Labour’s party conference, Nigel Farage was there with his rebuttal. The day of Kemi Badenoch’s speech, Farage was able to take her on. Marshall, says Andrew Graystone, “seems to believe that he has been blessed by god and called to use his enormous wealth to change the culture of the UK”.11

Then there is Tommy Robinson. Well, at least since his last prison stretch - locked up for contempt of court - a Christian convert. This gives a religious halo to his pathological attacks on Muslims. In this iteration Robinson has urged followers to attend a ‘United for Christ this Christmas’ open-air carol concert - a seasonal event that promises to “reclaim and celebrate our heritage, culture and Christian identity”.

His 150,000-strong Unite the Kingdom rally in September featured, of course, not only huge numbers of Union and Cross of St George flags. There were plenty of wooden crosses too and even a sermon delivered by Ukip-supporting bishop Ceirion Dewar of (his own) Confessing Anglican Church. He prayed for god to save us … after all, as he put it, “We are a nation under attack”.

Robinson’s embrace of Christianity came via Rikki Doolan and the prison pastor. He was seen leaving HMP Woodhall wearing a cross. Robinson then announced that for the first time in 10 years he would be attending a Sunday church service. And, after returning from his visit to Israel, he expressed his regret that he had not been baptised in the river Jordan while he was there. Robinson even claimed to have had a close encounter with the Holy Spirit.

Here Robinson is joining a growing number on the far right taking up the Jesus banner. Paul Golding’s Britain First and Nick Tenconi’s Ukip both stress their Christian values and defence of Judeo-Christian traditions.

Robinson’s carol event is, of course, promoted as a purely celebratory occasion: “This event is not about politics … it is about Jesus Christ - fully and completely,” Robinson insists. But the last time I attended a carol service it did not feature 13 speakers.

Robinson’s transformation into a Christian crusader has, not surprisingly, been dismissed as an exercise in ‘strategic rebranding’. Clearly the case. But, even if it is sincere, does it really matter? There are plenty of genuinely bigoted, racist and deeply reactionary Christians (as well as liberal and socialist Christians).

Either way, Robinson remains Robinson. Between scripture readings and planned testimonies runs a consistent thread of grievance. “We shouldn’t have to put this on,” Robinson complains. “There should be a massive Christmas event put on by our government.”12

When I read this, I must admit that I laughed out loud. The Church of England, the state church, puts on thousands of events over Christmas (there are 16,000 C of E churches in the UK). And, of course, despite the welcome rise in atheism, the irrefutable fact of the matter is that the UK remains constitutionally Christian.

State and religion

Charles Windsor is head of the Church of England - a Catholic-Protestant state hybrid. Bishops sit, by right, in the upper house of parliament - there are the lords temporal and the lords spiritual. Every Christmas, state personifications, not least the (feudal) green king, do pulpit readings, say prayers begging for the forgiveness of their sins and loudly sing hymns and carols, ancient and modern.

Who knows what Sir Keir will be doing this Christmas? Again it will be mildly interesting to see. He is, after all, a self-declared atheist, while his wife, Lady Victoria, is Jewish. Anyway, we shall certainly have official Britain parading its commitment to the ‘Christmas spirit’ and Charles III reiterating his “particular relationship” with and “commitment to the Church of England”.13

This reference to the sovereign’s “particular relationship” regarding the C of E relates, of course, to his role as “Supreme Governor of the Church of England” - a title dating back to the 16th century reformation and Henry VIII, which is meant to confer special responsibilities upon the monarch to supervise those who run the state church, both in terms of its “administration and its pastoral care”.14 Like every other House of Windsor monarch - from George V to Elizabeth II – Charles III is committed to the 39 articles of faith, in word, if not deed - he is, after all, a divorcee and an admitted adulterer.

Not that Charles III suffered the fate of Edward VIII. He wanted to marry the twice-divorced Wallis Simpson. Both Stanley Baldwin’s Tory government and the Church of England were implacably opposed. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Lang, declared that he would find it impossible to administer the coronation oath on Edward, unless he accepted the indissolubility of marriage. In his own words, Lang said that he - that is, the king - pursued personal happiness “in a manner inconsistent with the Christian principles of marriage”.15 The uncrowned Edward VIII abdicated in December 1936.

Clearly, Justin Welby, now former Archbishop of Canturbury, suffered no such scruples. However, there are, of course, good reasons to believe that establishment objections to Edward Windsor owed rather more to his openly proclaimed sympathies for Nazi Germany than religious doctrine over marriage vows. In the mid-1930s, with both countries gearing up for war, he was talked about by Adolf Hitler himself as England’s potential collaborator king.16

Jesus tradition

The traditional Christmas nativity - meaning ‘birth’, from the Latin nativitas - relies on the New Testament. Accordingly, Mary and Joseph, the ‘parents’ of Jesus, are pictured travelling from their native Nazareth, in the northern province of Galilee, to Judea and Bethlehem (the royal seat of the semi-mythical king David). The New Testament gets them making this arduous journey because of an entirely fictitious Roman census - a census that requires people to go to their place of birth. An impractical and entirely ridiculous notion.

We also have the parents of Jesus not being able to find a room at the inn, the stable and the manger, adoring shepherds, the three wise men, the magi, following a wondrous star, travelling from the east bearing gifts for the new-born King of the Jews, Herod ordering the slaughter of all first-born male children under two, and an angel urging Joseph to flee to Egypt with his wife and baby. All unmistakable fabulation.

However, the Hebrew prophet, Micah, had written of the coming messiah (the redeemer, the liberator) being born in Bethlehem. Though the New Testament Jesus is supposed to have been conceived by the Holy Spirit, not Joseph, two of the testaments, Matthew and Luke, trace his family tree back from Joseph to David, and finally to the first man, Adam himself. In other words, Jesus and his party propagandists were claiming that he was of royal blood - the legitimate king of Israel. Unlike the upstart Herodians. Not that this is made explicit by the New Testament redactors. No, on the contrary, Jesus, the apocalyptic revolutionary, the leader of a popular revolt, is stripped of his Jewish identity, his real history and made into a Greek-style man-god. The kingdom of this Jesus is not here on earth, but in the misty realms of heaven.

During the 1st and 2nd centuries Palestine was a hotbed of revolutionary activity in the Roman empire. The aristocratic Jewish writer, Flavius Josephus, mentions numerous urban and rural uprisings. Riots erupted in Jerusalem with almost every great festival. In the countryside guerrilla foci found themselves gaining enough adherents to allow regular military units to be formed. Their leaders sometimes had themselves crowned king on the messianic model. Among them was Simon, a former slave of Herod and Athronges, who was once a shepherd. However, the most successful liberation fighter was Judas, whose father, Ezechias, was a well-known “bandit” who was executed in 47 BCE. Josephus fumes that Judas “tried to stir the natives to revolt” by encouraging them not to pay taxes to the Romans. Judas “was a rabbi” (teacher), says Josephus, “with a sect of his own, and was quite unlike the others”.17 His message was republican, not monarchist: ‘The people should have no master except god’.

What Josephus calls the fourth philosophy had many names, including ‘sicarii’ and ‘zealot’. Its various components and factions dominated popular politics throughout the 66-70 Jewish revolution and the final heroic stand at the desert fortress of Masada in 74 - rather than surrender to the Romans, the 960 rebels preferred mass suicide. Despite being a member of the establishment, and someone seeking to ingratiate himself with the Romans, Josephus has to admit that these “bandits” and “false prophets” inspired the masses “to bold deeds”. Their “madness infected the entire people”, he writes sorrowfully.

Set against this nationalist-religious background, the New Testament Jesus is a very strange person, to say the least. Nowhere does he challenge or even question Roman occupation of Judea and indirect rule of Galilee (at the time of Jesus it was ruled by a pro-Roman Jewish satrap - Herod Antipas). Instead he appears to positively love the Roman tyrant. There is, for example, the centurion of Capernaum. Jesus not only cures his servant with one of his miracles. He marvels at the centurion’s religious conviction: “Truly, I say to you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.”18 Jesus even urges the Jewish masses to dutifully pay Roman taxes: “Render unto Caesar ...”19 Something akin to Tommy Sheridan telling the people of Glasgow the necessity of paying the poll tax under Margaret Thatcher. And yet, incongruously, Jesus manages to gain an enthusiastic mass following among the rural and urban poor.

This writer takes it, note, that Jesus was an actual living, breathing, feeling human being - despite the fact that we have no genuine, authentic, contemporary accounts of him. The New Testament was finalised long after his death by redactors who obviously had little knowledge of early 1st century Judaism. Then there are the passages in the Jewish antiquities (supposedly written by Josephus) glorifying him: ie, calling him the “Christ” - universally regarded by serious-minded scholars as crude forgeries.

Jesus for real

Of course, there have been countless claims by this, that or the other two-a-penny pundit to have discovered the real Jesus. Mostly, however, it amounts to “looking back” through some two thousand years of Christian darkness and finding their own conservative, liberal or leftwing reflection staring back at them from the “bottom of a deep well”.20

We can, though, using historical materialism to provide a reliable framework, and a lot of textual deduction and inference, reveal a probable Jesus. As a first step, what is demonstrably untrue can safely be put aside; what chimes with the events, the class struggles and the ideological outlook of his fourth-philosophy contemporaries and immediate successors can be retained, albeit with due caution.

Hence, the probable Jesus would not have disowned his family … four of his brothers are listed amongst his core disciples in the gospels. Nor would the probable Jesus have preached collaboration with the Romans: he would, on the contrary, have urged people to resist them and withhold their taxes. Exactly the crime that the “chief priests and officers” charged him with before the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate: “We have found this man perverting our nation, and forbidding us to give tribute to Caesar.”21 Certainly Jesus would not have said, “Do not resist one who is evil.”22 The idea is a monstrosity, fit only for despairing appeasers. Jewish scripture is packed full of worthy men and women, above all prophets, fighting what they saw as evil - not least foreign oppressors.

After the execution of John the Baptist, Jesus reveals himself to be not simply a prophetic ‘preparer of the way’, but the messiah. An extraordinary claim, but one fully within the Jewish thought-world. In biblical tradition there had been prophet-rulers (Moses and Samuel). Jesus was claiming to be the messiah-king: ie, the final king. In Jesus the spiritual and secular would be joined. A bold idea, which must have “aroused tremendous enthusiasm in his followers, and great hope in the country generally”.23 Perhaps this explains why, after he died on a Roman cross, the Jesus party refused to believe he was really dead. His claimed status put him on a par with Elijah: he would return at the appointed hour to lead the Jewish people to victory.

New Testament (re)writers are at pains to play down or deny Jesus’s assumed royal title. Claiming to be King of the Jews was to openly rebel against Rome. Instead they concentrate on terms like ‘messiah’, which they present as being other-worldly. The Jews, including the 12 leading disciples, are shown as not understanding this concept, though it existed in many of their sacred texts, which they had, surely, studied and fully internalised.

Evidently, Jesus showed no interest in military strategy or tactics. Rome would be beaten without recourse either to conventional or guerrilla war. Nevertheless, though Jesus did not organise his followers into military units, at least five of his inner circle clearly came from the ranks of the revolutionary ‘bandits’ and proudly retained their guerrilla nicknames (ie, Peter Barjonah - ‘outlaw’, Simon - the zealot; James and John - ‘sons of thunder’, and Judas Iscariot - the ‘dagger man’).

This is hardly surprising. Jesus was no pacifist: “I come not to send peace, but a sword!”24 However, liberation would not depend on rousing the masses to stage a general uprising, but supernatural intervention. There would be a cosmic battle, where a tiny army of the righteous triumph against overwhelmingly superior forces. According to scripture, Gideon fought and won against the Midianites with only 300 men - he told the other 20,000 men in his army to “return home”.25 Jesus promised something along those lines ... but even more fantastic.

Following the last supper, a highly charged prelude to the ‘last days’, his disciples inform him that they only have two swords. Jesus calmly replies: “It is enough.”26 He appears convinced that Yahweh will send him “12 legions of angels” to fight the Romans.27

The aims of Jesus and the guerrilla fighters were broadly compatible. Where they differed was the degree that their strategy relied on heavenly intervention. Either way, the zealots were unlikely to have actively opposed Jesus. He might have been a factional rival, but he was no enemy. His mass movement would at the very least have been seen as a tremendous opportunity to spread their word.

After the final apocalyptic victory over the Romans, Jesus fervently believed he would preside over god’s new order - a communism where the poor inherit the earth and the rich get their just deserts:

[B]lessed be you poor, for yours is the kingdom of god .... But woe unto you that are rich ... Woe unto you that are full now, for you shall hunger. Woe unto you that laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep.28

Of course, Jesus failed - like the other 1st and 2nd century Jewish revolutionaries. However, unlike them, though, he never faded in memory. Leadership of his party passed first to his brother, James the Just, then his cousin, Simeon. But it was Paul who was the real founder of Christianity. His entirely new, Hellenistic Jesus religion became, hundreds of years later under Constantine, the official state cult of the Roman empire.

Happy birthday

My book, Fantastic reality, deals with what happened after Jesus died and I am not going to repeat the argument here. Suffice to say, what we need to appreciate for our current purpose is that not only is the biblical account of Jesus full of reinvention: so too is Christmas … but on steroids.

Take December 25 and anno Domini 1. It is quite possible that Jesus was born that day. The odds are 365:1 (ie, 0.0027%). In fact the odds are considerably greater than that, though, because we have no idea about which year he was born in. Many scholars reckon between 6 and 4 BCE.

Clearly there was a wish amongst early Christians - that is, the followers of Paul - to give Jesus a birth date which could be celebrated. Around 200 CE Clement of Alexandria writes:

There are those who have determined not only the year of our Lord’s birth, but also the day; and they say that it took place in the 28th year of Augustus, and in the 25th day of [the Egyptian month] Pachon [May 20] ... Further, others say that he was born on the 24th or 25th of Pharmuthi [April 20 or 21].29

Either way, the western church fixed on December 25 in the early 4th century. The first recorded Christmas celebration was in Rome in 336.30 Not because of the recovery of a lost collective memory or through exhaustive research: rather because the church needed a date.

Why December 25? From the earliest times, northern peoples marked the winter solstice – called, in Old English, Gēola or Yule, in Old French, Noël or Naël. The longest night of the year is December 21 - a sacred moment of death and rebirth. The sun reaches its lowest point in the sky, but, heralding spring, begins to rise again.

The Romans, famously, had their Saturnalia, when masters waited on their domestic slaves, gifts were exchanged, along with much drinking, feasting and fornication. Beginning on December 17, the festival culminated on December 23. Some eastern churches, sticking as they do to this or that version of the old Julian calendar, celebrate Christmas on January 6 or 7 (the birth of Jesus being connected to the Epiphany: that is, the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan, when god was supposed to have revealed himself in his only begotten son).

It is the same with many other Christian festivals, Easter included. The new colonised the old. But it is perfectly understandable. After all, we all need a break from the normal routine, we need special days to bring us together, we all need to party. The labour movement adopted May 1 - May Day - as its special day in 1904, partially because it was the long established day to celebrate fertility and the beginning of summer; but mainly because we simply required a day to display international solidarity, our strength and readiness to assume state power.

The Christian church too. Except that its archbishops, bishops, abbots and deacons were incorporated first into the Roman state, then the feudal system, as privileged, but junior partners. That said, our labour and social democratic parties, parliamentary representatives and trade union general secretaries have, in large measure, been thoroughly incorporated, once again as junior partners - part of the system’s managed decline.

So from its earliest history the Christian church has been bound up with paganism. Nowadays, of course, the pagan winter solstice has not only been Christianised: it has been thoroughly commercialised too. Christmas therefore combines pagan, Christian and capitalist elements. Mistletoe, holly, ivy and other evergreens have their origins in the deep past. They symbolise life, sex and renewal. Church services and nativity plays are a Christian overlay. Christmas cards; Christmas trees with lights, baubles and expensive presents; Christmas class reconciliation and shmultzery - all that comes via 19th century capitalism. Prince Albert, Charles Dickens and the Oxford movement each made their own particular contribution to the transformation of Christmas from a raucous community celebration into a children, family and home-centred occasion.

Father Christmas just about sums it up. With antecedents in the Norse god, Odin, via Saint Nicholas (ie, Santa Claus), the modern Father Christmas, as he is known in England, with his jovial ho-ho-ho personality, black shiny boots, white fur-trimmed red suit, his sleigh and reindeer - he is a 19th century reinvention (cemented in the popular imagination by Coca-Cola adverts beginning in 193131).

It is hardly surprising that many Bible-centred Christians consider Christmas a pagan abomination. What does a jolly fat man riding on a sleigh, loaded with toys and pulled along by flying reindeer have to do with the birth of their “son of god”? The answer is: absolutely nothing. Congregations are urged to avoid the temptations of “man-made traditions and holidays”. Instead keep to the feast days and celebrations “observed by Jesus Christ, the apostles and the early Church”.32

To state the obvious, all feast days and celebrations - including the ones observed by Jesus ben Joseph, his brother, James, and his nephew, Simeon - were made by human beings for human beings, and often date back to the earliest of times. As for me, traditional Christmas pudding - with lashings of cream, not custard - that and traditional Christmas ale - are irresistible temptations.

  1. www.bankofengland.co.uk/explainers/how-much-do-we-spend-at-christmas.↩︎

  2. www.vouchercodes.co.uk/savings-guides/guides-reports/shopping-for-christmas-2025-the-christmas-period.↩︎

  3. To get an idea of how the other half lives, pick up a weekend edition of the Financial Times and, in particular, its HTSI supplement (till 2022 brazenly titled How to spend it).↩︎

  4. www.civilsociety.co.uk/news/average-ceo-pay-at-large-charities-rises-to-175-000-survey-shows.html.↩︎

  5. Luke ii:14.↩︎

  6. Figure of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day totalled 1,961,000; Easter 938,000 (www.christiantoday.com/article/church.of.england.enjoys.strong.turnout.at.christmas.and.easter.but.attendance.remains.below.pre.pandemic.levels/142429.htm).↩︎

  7. D Kruger Covenant: the new politics of home, neighbourhood and nation London 2023.↩︎

  8. Daily Mail March 30 2025.↩︎

  9. The Independent October 20 2025.↩︎

  10. The New World October 15 2025.↩︎

  11. A Graystone ‘The Marshall plan’ Prospect March 27 2024.↩︎

  12. M Scholl ‘Christ in the crossfire: Tommy Robinson and the battle for Christmas’ Searchlight December 9 2025.↩︎

  13. Christianity September 14 2022.↩︎

  14. www.churchofengland.org/about/leadership-and-governance.↩︎

  15. I Bradley God save the queen: the spiritual heart of the monarchy New York NY 2012, p177.↩︎

  16. See A Morton 17 carnations: the Windsors, the Nazis and the cover-up London 2015.↩︎

  17. GA Williamson (trans) Josephus: the Jewish war Harmondsworth 1981, p133.↩︎

  18. Matthew v:10.↩︎

  19. Luke xx:25.↩︎

  20. This “deep well” metaphor is adapted from George Tyrell, a Catholic convert from Anglicanism, who argued in favour of “scientific inquiry”, when it came to Jesus (G Tyrell Christianity at the crossroads London 1910, pp43,44). There are, sadly, many examples of Jesus as self-reflection, including in these pages. Advocating his “impossibilist” call for an Israeli-Palestinian workers’ state, Daniel Lazare called for us to emulate “the internationalist Jesus”: “‘What would Jesus do?’ should be our slogan - not in a direct sense, needless to say, but dialectically, so that his yearning for international moral solidarity becomes our own” (D Lazare, ‘An international socialist?’ Weekly Worker December 14 2023: weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1471/an-international-socialist).↩︎

  21. Luke xxiii:2.↩︎

  22. Matthew v:39.↩︎

  23. H Maccoby Revolution in Judea London 1973, p163.↩︎

  24. Matthew x,34.↩︎

  25. Judges vii,2.↩︎

  26. Luke xxii:38.↩︎

  27. Matthew xxvi: 53.↩︎

  28. Luke vi,20-25.↩︎

  29. W Wilson (trans) The writings of Clement of Alexandria Vol 1, Edinburgh 1867, p445.↩︎

  30. See A McGowan, ‘How December 25 became Christmas’ Bible Review December 2002.↩︎

  31. theferret.scot/fact-check-coca-cola-red-santa-claus-christmas.↩︎

  32. www.ucg.org/beyond-today/beyond-today-magazine/was-jesus-born-on-christmas-day.↩︎