On Christmas Eve 2023, GB News’s Neil Oliver devoted his show to the meaning of Christmas.

In his monologue (editorial) at the beginning, he pointed out that Christmas is the only time when the world comes together to contemplate peace and good will towards all. He said that if we water down this season, we are in danger of forgetting what it means to be human. He also mentioned that St Francis of Assisi brought us the original manger scene, something about which I wrote in October:

Here is the video of the full show. Skip through the news and the adverts and it is about 45 minutes long:

At around the 20-minute mark, Oliver spoke with the Revd Gavin Ashenden who was once one of Queen Elizabeth’s chaplains, then he converted to Catholicism. Oliver’s panel guest, Andrew Eborn, asked what made Ashenden make that choice. Ashenden said that he sees truth in Catholicism. Oliver looked at him sceptically and asked him what he thought of Church leaders in general, to which he replied, not much. Oliver had this look on his face that seemed to say, ‘Convince me I should believe and I will’, but as St Paul’s letters point out, an unbeliever is likely to believe only once he sees leaders reflecting that faith in a transformed way of godliness and holiness. What internationally recognised Christian leaders today meet those criteria?

The third segment had to do with St Francis of Assisi’s manger scene. Oliver interviewed the American novelist Laurel Guillen, author of A Bellwether Christmas. She said that 2023 is the 800th anniversary year of the first one, which Francis devised for a Christmas Mass in Greccio, near Assisi. (He used the manger as the altar and had a real ox and a donkey there, too.) She said she had become interested in the saint when her grandmother took her to Italy for holiday in the 1990s and they visited some of the places Francis had lived and worked. You can read more about Laurel Guillen, whose husband worked for ABC News, at BeliefNet.

It is rather incredible to think not only that Francis came up with the first manger scene in an era when the Mass was said in church but also that the concept has endured ever since and is a universal Christian representation of the earthly birth of Christ. I began looking at two patterns of wrapping paper we have at home. Whilst they are secular in nature, both feature animals expressing their joy at the season — a bit of Franciscan inspiration there, it would seem.

Oliver’s final guest was Professor Ralph Schollhammer who, being German, was over the moon at having been invited to discuss the origins of the Christmas Tree. He said:

This is the highlight of my career being with you on Christmas Eve and talking about the Christmas Tree.

He went on to say:

All the cool Christmas traditions come from people with German accents, so, from the Krampus to the Christmas tree. Where did it all start? In Germany.

All the stories about the Christmas tree seem to have arisen around the 15th century:

One story I really like is that Martin Luther once saw the stars above and he was so moved by it that he said, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if we have these evergreens in our house and put lights on [them]?’ That’s supposed to be the beginning of the Christmas tree and putting candles on the tree … Given the Protestant Reformation and everything, I think it’s a very, very nice story.

What I really like about it is that it’s the greatest story of cultural appropriation that ever happened because the idea of the Christmas tree comes from the solstice on the 21st or 22nd of December, the last really short days and then the days get longer. And you have this really nice way of how Christianity adopted it and turned it into something of its own, in a way that worked for everybody.

So, I think the story of the Christmas tree is, politically, if we want to go down this road, has probably more relevance than one would think.

Oliver asked Andrew Eborn, broadcaster and technology lawyer, what he thought. The normally serious Eborn surprised me in his various GB News appearances this week with his knowledge of Christmas trivia. He told Oliver and Schollhammer that the very first artificial trees actually had boughs made of goose feathers which were dyed green!

Oliver returned to Schollhammer and said that there was something very ‘primeval’ and ‘fundamental’ about focussing on something that is ever green during the darkest, bleakest days of the year when everything else had died. Schollhammer agreed, pointing out how much human life depended on the seasons, something we do not have to worry about today.

Schollhammer ended by saying that, on that basis, we have much for which to be thankful today, even though we criticise some aspects of modernity.

Oliver asked him if he sensed that more people were getting into a celebratory spirit this Christmas season than in previous years. He replied:

I hope so. I hope so. A revival of those traditions and the way we look at life, which is connected to it, would be a good thing even if it’s only once or twice a year, right? I understand that this is not something that happens every day, but I think this would be a good thing.

Then Schollhammer gave us a highly interesting fact about German history’s link to the evergreen from two millennia ago (emphases mine):

You see a little bit of a revival of it, particularly in the German-speaking world, where the forest and the trees have always had a very specific significance, that goes back to the idea that our history began with beating the Romans in the forest, so basically, among the trees our nation was formed. If you want, that’s one of the myths that surrounds German mythology.

He returned to Oliver’s point about celebration — and was probably unaware that he included a Sarah Palin expression here from 2008:

But, yes, there is something on the horizon. I think there is a sense among people that the next year or the coming years will be different from the preceding ones. And I hope to convey one message to your viewers: let’s get into this New Year as happy warriors … The changes we want to see are substantial but we should not lose hope. Let’s be serious about these issues, but let’s be happy warriors about it. That would be my New Year’s message to myself and also to your viewers and your listeners.

Neil Oliver obviously hadn’t heard the expression before, either:

Fantastic, Ralph! ‘Happy warriors’!

This ends my further exploration of Christmas traditions for this year.

Forbidden Bible Verses returns tomorrow.