Christmas is our present to the rest of the world, says Archbishop
. . .By Ruth Gledhill and Tosin Sulaiman

THE Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, spelt out the meaning of Christmas last night. “Christmas is the Christian’s Christmas present to everybody else,” he said. “Christmas, for a Christian, tells us why people matter.”

Dr Williams was speaking at a ceremony opposite the Old Vic theatre in South London to switch on the Christmas lights for Lambeth Council.

Lambeth was the first council this year to get caught up in the annual “Christmas is banned” news story, the religious equivalent of the perennial winter weather story. For fear of offending ethnic minorities, council officials had decreed last month that the lights should not be Christmas lights but “winter lights” and “celebrity lights”.

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