LETTER : Forget Christmas, and have a merry pagan Winter Solstice festival

Sir: Two articles decrying the way we celebrate Christmas were published on 19 December. One was by a prominent hardline atheist, Richard Dawkins, the other by a prominent liberal Christian, Don Cupitt.

Both have missed the point of Christmas: that it is not primarily a Christian event, and never has been. It is the pagan festival of the winter solstice, already thousands of years old when Christianity arrived on the scene. The ancient druids celebrated the rebirth of the sun; the Greeks made it the birthday of Zeus; the Romans debased it and called it Saturnalia; the Jews attached it to the rebirth of their religion after it had been "killed" by the Syrians; the Christians turned it into Jesus's birthday; and nowadays it is used to celebrate consumerism.

What of it? Christmas is what Professor Dawkins would call a successful "meme", an idea that shows great adaptability and Darwinian fitness. When consumerism declines and another religion rises in its place (as will surely happen one day), Christmas will find a way of attaching itself to that, too. After all, it has even transplanted itself to Australia, changing itself into a summer-solstice celebration. A festival that could survive that could survive anything.

RUPERT LEE

London SW14