Christmas speaks to our deepest Australian values

Dear ,

It’s almost Christmas again, and I’m drawn to my once-a-year reflection on this cultural event whose religious origins embody and invoke the best of our Western ethical and moral traditions.

When I first went to St Joseph’s convent school, aged 10, the earnest son of devout Methodists, I was initially confronted by the gaudily painted statues of saints lurking behind the entrance doors and looming in the church.

This was a different, slightly medieval, world from the aesthetically austere, unadorned Christianity I was used to.

Then there were the prayers on that first parade. The first one I had never heard before: “Hail Mary full of grace…” which was raced through faster than the call of the field in the Melbourne Cup. Then repeated, and repeated, like some sort of spiritual calisthenics. Then eventually they got to a prayer I knew “Our Father who art in heaven…” but at the same break-neck speed, and when I eventually caught up I tipped over the edge because the last bit about “For thine be the kingdom…” was missing altogether.

Then at 12:00 there was the Angelus bell, and a reiteration of the prayers.

I didn’t understand it at the time, but the Angelus was a relic of a time before accurate timepieces on every wrist, where the hours were counted by repetition and religious rite, keeping everyone in step not only temporally, but spiritually.

It produced not just order, but community.

I doubt they ring the Angelus bell in too many Catholic schools these days, or that decades of the Rosary are regularly recited. There’s plenty of regimentation around, but without a praxis that inclines us towards virtue.

I think mainstream Protestantism made a mistake by being too iconoclastic and rejecting almost all the liturgical rhythms of the year and insisting that to be a real Christian required a one-to-one relationship with Christ.

It didn’t leave room for the cultural believer who walked the walk, and talked the talk, but did so as a matter of practice, not necessarily thought-out belief.

As a society I think we make a mistake by not having a regular calendar of public observances and rites that bind us together as a community.

We certainly need a glue.

While once some might furtively subvert the commonweal, now many are openly trying to smash it.

Perhaps the most tangible sign is the recent pro-Hamas demonstrations, or the Extinction Rebellion glue-and-traffic-stoppers.

Less tangible is how individuals in trusted institutions are taking sides, or whole institutions being subverted by legislation, or personnel stacking.

Take the law.

The USA is further down this track than we are, with the multiple, mostly confected, charges against Trump making partisan judges gatekeepers for what can and can’t be democratically decided. Yesterday’s ruling in Colorado is the latest instalment which by its overreach shows just how degenerate the lawfare has become.

Our legal system isn't so partisan yet, but it is heading that way, with idiosyncratic and ideologically convenient rulings by judges in many environmental matters, or the complete disregard for core values like “innocent until proven guilty” of the #MeToo movement, aided and abetted by public prosecutors, legal academics and commissioners of government bodies.

Christmas is one of the few bastions of the old religious order that survives, along with Easter, but they are both hollowed out by multiculturalism, agnosticism and atheism to be not much more than just superior days off, with gift giving and lots of eating and drinking. We shouldn't leave them there.

While many at the ARC conference (Alliance for Responsible Citizenship) earlier this year hoped for a Christian reawakening as a path to saving Western civilisation – people like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, first a Muslim, then an atheist, and now a Christian, and her husband Niall Ferguson – I don’t see this happening. And if it is to happen, that is a matter for the Christians amongst us.

I think secularism has become too deeply embedded in our Australian psyche for religion to regain its hold, but I think there is still a strong sense of what it is to be an Australian and this does rest on key Christian principles of the essential dignity of all human beings and individual autonomy and responsibility.

The clearest demonstration of this was The Voice constitutional referendum with majorities against inserting a race-based clause into the Constitution in all age groups, apart from those 18-34, and a very strong majority overall. Many migrant groups were opposed as well.

The clearest challenge at the moment to that sense of shared national identity is the rise of antisemitism and the apparent acceptability of chants like “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” or “Gas the Jews”, the Angelus bells of the unAustralian.

We need to reaffirm the validity of old rituals and establish new ones that speak to those without a spiritual commitment, but who retain imprints of cultural practices, to reinforce what is good and marginalise what is bad.

Psychology has pretty clearly demonstrated that we act before we think, and that when we think it is to rationalise what we have just done not to actuate it. That doesn’t mean that thought doesn’t play a shaping part in the process, but that thought has to be internalised via habit before the decision has to be made. Good habits literally lead to good decisions.

Organised religion provides a habit, and it does that through ritual and observance. But ritual and observance on their own can do the same thing.

So this Christmas, whether you are a believer or not, I’d suggest you put some ritual and observance into your day. Maybe bypass the 18-34 year olds, but go for their kids. The other side has been doing that for at least one generation now.

The nativity is a great story and it speaks to our values. It is full of ambition – it doesn’t matter where you come from, you can be anything – has strong social justice themes that don’t abandon justice; has a strong plot line and lots of tension; and ends with the flight to Egypt, leaving you waiting for the sequel.

But I believe we need more than just a couple of remnant Christian celebrations to bring the country together. Anzac Day shows the way here.

Anzac Day is probably our only secular day of observance with huge community attendances at what is essentially a religious service, all the way down to the singing of hymns like Abide with me, and O God our help in ages past.

It is quintessentially Australian as it celebrates not a victory, but personal sacrifice and a defeat.

We need more of these occasions. That’s one reason this year the AIP instituted an annual celebration of Emancipation day on August 1, the date on which the British Parliament outlawed slavery, and then did its best to outlaw and suppress slavery around the world.

This is the beginning of the era of universal human rights which so defines the modern era, and is under threat from victim culture, intersectionality and the double-think of “anti-racism”, which are often smuggled into society through Christian concepts like charity and mercy.

We will continue to celebrate it and hope to persuade other organisations to do the same. But we need to define other similar events that demand celebration and celebrate virtue. Just as the old rituals bound and infused almost every moment of life, the more secular celebrations of liberal democratic values we have, the better, and the more likely people are to develop good habits and act those values out.

Wishing you a merry Christmas and a happy New Year.

Regards,

GRAHAM YOUNG
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR