Put Christ Back into Christmas: When Proclaiming Christ Becomes Extremism
The controversy erupted in early December 2025 when Tommy Robinson announced a public carol service in London under the banner “Put Christ Back into Christmas.” The purpose was simple: to gather people in a public space to sing traditional carols and speak openly of the birth of Jesus Christ.¹ In any other generation in Britain, such an appeal would have been unremarkable. For centuries, the proclamation of the Nativity in the town square was considered the natural duty of a Christian people. Even in the late twentieth century, public carolling was considered the most ordinary expression of cultural faith. Today, however, a simple declaration of Christian belief is treated with suspicion.
Within hours, the phrase—widely used in Christian settings for decades—was condemned as exclusionary, racist, and far-right.² No attempt was made to interrogate the meaning of the words themselves, nor their long history in Christian devotion. Instead, the accusation was applied automatically to the person, as though the same sentence, if spoken by a bishop at a cathedral service, would be described as sacred, but in the mouth of a controversial figure becomes sinister. This reveals the real mechanism at work: the theological truth of the statement is irrelevant; the identity of the speaker is everything. The moral judgment is made before the meaning is heard.
This inversion is a symptom of a deeper cultural tension: the collapse of Christian belief in a country that still uses Christian symbolism to decorate its identity. Britain retains Christmas as a civic ritual—but not as a confession of faith. The event exposed the awkward truth that the nation no longer knows what it means to say that Christmas is the Nativity of Jesus Christ.
A nation that remembers but no longer believes
Christmas remains the United Kingdom’s most widely observed cultural festival, with more than 90% of the population engaging in seasonal activities regardless of belief.³ The entire rhythm of winter life orbits the feast: markets, music, films, school events, light displays, charity appeals, family reunions. Even the language of benevolence—“goodwill to all”—is borrowed from the Gospel. Yet beneath this glittering façade, belief has withered.
Christian identification in England and Wales has fallen to 46.2%, down from 59.3% in 2011.⁴ In demographic terms, this is a dramatic collapse. Sociologists describe the United Kingdom’s transformation as one of the fastest religious reversals in recorded European history, where a majority-Christian society became post-Christian within a single generation.⁵ In 1983, the British Social Attitudes Survey recorded Christian affiliation at 66%. Among younger cohorts today, it has more than halved.⁶ Christianity has ceased to be a living inheritance and has become a distant memory.
Church attendance provides an even more sobering picture. In 1980, Sunday worship attendance was estimated at 11% of the population; the English Church Census (1998–2005) documented a fall to 6.3%.⁷ By the late 2010s, serious studies placed weekly attendance at 5%.⁸ The form of Christmas, however, has expanded: a longer commercial season, bigger public spectacles, and a stronger cultural mood. Thus emerges the paradox of modern Britain: the cultural shell of Christmas has been strengthened precisely as the theological core has been emptied.
The nation keeps the festival because it values the atmosphere—warmth, nostalgia, community, childhood magic—but no longer believes the reason for the festival: that God became man.
The slogan with a history
The phrase “Put Christ Back into Christmas” has appeared for decades in evangelical and Catholic contexts as a pastoral response to the secular abbreviation “Xmas.” R.C. Sproul noted the expression as a common Christian appeal to restore devotional focus during Advent.⁹ The phrase appears in Advent banners, parish bulletins, Protestant radio campaigns, diocesan newsletters, and Catholic pastoral letters. In North America, Canada, and Australia, it has been used to defend the theological meaning of Christmas against commercialisation.¹⁰ No bishop was accused of racism for hanging the slogan outside a church. No evangelical was denounced for saying it on radio.
The accusation of extremism does not arise from the words themselves, but from the identity of the speaker. This is the political transformation of language: content becomes irrelevant, context becomes everything. When the same expression moves from a church porch to the mouth of a controversial figure, its interpretation changes entirely. Such a transformation reveals that the cultural anxiety is not about Christmas—it is about Christianity entering the public square without permission from the official custodians of public morality.
The mechanism is simple: the word becomes “hate” when spoken by someone already condemned. The same sentence becomes catechesis in one setting and extremism in another. This asymmetry shows that public judgment now rests on a sociological approach to speech, not a theological one.
The fear beneath the outrage
Why should the statement “Christmas belongs to Christ” provoke anxiety in a country that still calendars Christmas as a public holiday and crowns a monarch as Defender of the Faith? The answer lies in the unresolved contradiction of secular Britain: the attempt to retain Christian ethics without Christian theology.
Modern liberal democracies draw deeply from the Christian well: the belief that every human being has intrinsic dignity because God assumed human nature; the conviction that moral law transcends the State; the notion that love has universal scope, not tribal limits.¹¹ Secular political language—“rights,” “equality,” “compassion”—did not emerge from nowhere. It matured through centuries of meditation on the implications of the Incarnation.
If God became man, then man is sacred.
If God entered history, then history has purpose.
If God took flesh, then flesh has destiny.
Remove the Incarnation, and these ethical structures lose their foundation. For a time, they survive by cultural inertia, like light that continues after a lamp has been switched off. Eventually, they fade into sentiment. To say “Put Christ Back into Christmas” is to challenge the illusion that Britain can preserve universal benevolence while denying the theological root that created it. The secular conscience senses the danger: truth may re-enter the conversation.
Thus the statement is interpreted not as devotion, but as aggression. Proclamation itself becomes a threat. A culture that believes belief is private sees public truth-claims as an attack on neutrality. This is why the same sentence that drew no controversy in 1990 draws fury in 2025. It is not the faith that changed—it is the country.
The silence of the Church of England
The controversy also exposes a deeper wound: the reason such a slogan shocks is because the Church of England has ceased to proclaim the Incarnation with conviction. The Established Church was created to give theological direction to the nation.¹² Its bishops sit in the House of Lords, not merely as civic ornaments, but as guardians of Christian conscience in public law. Historically, the Church of England preached Christ in the marketplace, challenged kings, formed culture, and catechised the nation.
Today, it prefers non-conflictual language—“community,” “values,” “inclusion”—which speaks comfortably within secular frameworks while avoiding statements that imply divine authority. The vocabulary of transcendence has been replaced with the vocabulary of therapy. The Church of England has become present in ceremony, but absent in belief.
This retreat has concrete consequences. When Christians encounter hostility in public life—street preachers arrested for quoting Scripture under public order powers,¹³ nurses warned against wearing crosses,¹⁴ midwives disciplined for refusing to participate in abortion¹⁵—it is not the Church of England that intervenes. Legal advocacy groups defend Christians; bishops provide silence. The Established Church fears that defending Christian witness will be labelled “Christian nationalism.” It will defend every other identity in the name of inclusion, but hesitates to defend adherents of its own faith from public erosion.
Why? Because the Church of England has internalised the secular belief that religion is acceptable as identity, but unacceptable as truth—acceptable as culture, but unacceptable as reality. Thus Christianity is confined to heritage, rather than asserted as revelation. A cross becomes a symbol of personal expression, rather than sign of divine authority. The faith is turned inward into private sentiment, rather than outward into public proclamation.
In this way, the Church of England unintentionally trains the nation to treat Christianity as embarrassing. It reinforces the idea that Christian belief is impolite unless phrased as vague kindness. When the Church refuses to preach Christ, someone else inevitably will—and that someone may not be a theologian, or careful, or capable of defending the faith against cultural accusation. The vacuum is the Church of England’s own creation.
A cultural conscience, not a movement
It would be an error to interpret this controversy as a coherent political mobilisation. It is more accurately the expression of a cultural conscience emerging from below. Many Britons, even those who do not attend church, sense that the meaning of Christmas has been lost. They feel instinctively that the country has preserved the trappings of the feast while forgetting the feast itself. The memory of the Nativity lingers in tradition even where belief has died.
When the Church of England does not speak the truth boldly, the truth returns in unexpected voices—and often imperfectly. This is the danger. Not that a layman uses a slogan, but that only a layman appears willing to say the Name. A theological statement has been outsourced to the margins of public discourse.
But slogans cannot replace sacraments. The restoration of Christmas will not come through public rallies, nor through cultural agitation, nor through defensive posture. The shepherds did not hold banners; they knelt. The Magi did not campaign; they adored. The memory of Bethlehem is not a political manifesto but a cosmic event.
If Christmas is to be reclaimed, it must be reclaimed on the correct terrain: worship, catechesis, proclamation, prayer, and repentance. Cultural nostalgia cannot substitute for conversion. A belief must be spoken, heard, and lived.
Restoring Christmas means restoring Christ
To put Christ back into Christmas is not a political act but a theological one. It means confessing that the feast is the mystery of the Word made flesh, not a winter mood. It means acknowledging that the dignity Britain cherishes originates in the doctrine it has forgotten. The future cannot be built on borrowed metaphysics.
Britain must choose: either return to the source of its moral inheritance, or drift toward moral incoherence. The civic retention of Christmas without belief is spiritually impossible in the long term. The crisis is not Christmas—it is Christ.
For the Church of England, the path to renewal begins with proclaiming the truth it once knew how to declare to the nation: that in Bethlehem, God entered the world, that the Child lying in the manger is Lord, and that the destiny of the nation is bound to the mystery of His Incarnation. This proclamation must be spoken not as heritage, but as reality.
If it is spoken, the slogans will fall silent, the accusations will fade, and the truth will speak louder than cultural suspicion:
Unto you is born this day a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord.
- Tommy Robinson is the public name under which his commentary and activism have been known for many years. His legal name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, and the public name was originally adopted to protect his wife and children during periods of hostility. It is now the established identity under which his work is known.
- Claims of racism and far-right association were reported in commentary including The Daily Record, December 2025. No allegation related to the slogan’s content.
- Statista Research Department, “Share of people celebrating Christmas in the UK,” 2023.
- Office for National Statistics, Religion in England and Wales: Census 2021 (November 2022), reporting 46.2% Christian identification.
- Stephen Bullivant, Nonverts: The Making of Ex-Christian America, Oxford University Press, 2022; Bullivant notes the UK’s rapid post-Christian transition.
- British Social Attitudes Survey, 1983–2020 dataset.
- Peter Brierley, UK Church Statistics 2005–2015, Brierley Consultancy, 2014.
- The Economist, “Britain’s Churches Are Emptying,” 23 December 2017; YouGov, “Church attendance at Christmas,” December 2018.
- R.C. Sproul, “What Does ‘Xmas’ Mean?”, Ligonier Ministries; discusses the phrase as a common Christian appeal.
- American Vision, “Does ‘Xmas’ Take Christ Out of Christmas?”, noting widespread campaign usage in evangelical contexts.
- Larry Siedentop, Inventing the Individual: The Origins of Western Liberalism, Penguin, 2015.
- The constitutional role of the Church of England is set in the Bill of Rights (1689) and the Coronation Oath Act (1688).
- BBC News, “Street preacher wins damages for wrongful arrest,” 29 July 2021; The Guardian, reports of arrests under Section 5 (2016–2021).
- European Court of Human Rights, Eweida and Others v. United Kingdom, Judgment of 15 January 2013.
- Doogan and Wood v. NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde, UK Supreme Court Judgment [2014] UKSC 68.
RELATED ARTICLES
LATEST ARTICLES
- Today’s Mass: December 19th Ember Friday in AdventThe Ember Saturday in Advent emphasizes fasting and preparation for the arrival of the Lord, culminating in a significant Mass with historical roots tied to St. Peter’s tomb. With ancient lessons from Isaiah and teachings on repentance through John the Baptist, the liturgy reflects themes of salvation, healing, and the anticipation of Christ’s coming.
- 03 O Antiphons: O Radix JesseThe third Great “O” Antiphon emphasizes the paradox of the Messiah, who emerges from the seemingly extinguished lineage of David, represented as a stump. This highlights God’s promise, affirming that Christ, the Root of Jesse, embodies eternal kingship through humility. The Church pleads for His arrival amidst enduring sin and suffering.
- 21.12.25 Nuntiatoria LXXXV: Veni EmmanuelAdvent, framed by Rorate caeli, gives this edition its governing logic: salvation and justice descend from above but require an earth opened by fasting, restraint, and fidelity. Set within Gaudete Sunday and the Advent Embertide, the editorial connects the contemporary crises in law, conscience, universities, and the liturgy itself, arguing that where truth is replaced by narrative and worship by management, justice cannot arise. Renewal begins not with control, but with receptivity.
- From the Primus 21.12.25The edition of Nuntiatoria, during Advent, critiques ecclesial uncertainties and cultural disintegration. It examines episcopal governance and public morality, highlighting growing Christian marginalization and the displacement of true beliefs. Through worship, it emphasizes the need for fidelity rather than reinvention, seeking to strengthen hope amid societal confusion and faith challenges.
- ORDO w/c 21.12.25 – 05.01.26The document details the liturgical calendar from December 21 to January 5, covering significant feasts, including the Fourth Sunday of Advent, Christmas, and subsequent commemorations. It emphasizes themes of preparation, celebration, and reflection within the Advent season and highlights key figures like St. Thomas, St. Stephen, and St. John.
Leave a Reply