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The Bunker – News without the nonsense

Led by little donkeys: Why Christmas is more political than you thought

The Bunker – News without the nonsense

Podmasters

News, Government, Politics, Society & Culture

4.61K Ratings

🗓️ 22 December 2023

⏱️ 25 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Our political debate stops at Christmas — but this hasn’t always been the case. It was only in the Victorian era that Christmas was reinvented as a time for family and domesticity, with no room for politics. Should politics return to Christmas? Has it been there all along? University of St Andrews Senior Lecturer in Theology Rev Dr Stephen Holmes speaks to Alex Andreou about the politics of Christmas.  • “Christmas is heavily focused around the narrative of the birth of Jesus, a narrative which is inescapably political.” - Rev Dr Stephen Holmes • “We think of Christmas as a time when you want to gather the family, shut the door, put your slippers on and relax together. You really don't want to be faced with the realities of injustice and pain in the world." - Rev Dr Stephen Holmes • “It's very, very hard to separate the idea of charity and altruism, from some sort of political judgement about how the world is and how it should be.” - Rev Dr Stephen Holmes www.patreon.com/bunkercast  Written and Presented by Alex Andreou. Produced by: Eliza Davis Beard. Audio production: Simon Williams. Managing Editor: Jacob Jarvis. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Music by Kenny Dickinson. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

My name is Stan. I'm at. Nice to meet you. So you took up photography where? I've always loved

0:05.5

photography but I turn it into earning a living at 60. I enrolled on a day course.

0:11.8

Well college. I loved going to college. It's good you can retry. I'm enrolled on the day course. But college?

0:13.0

I loved going to college.

0:14.0

It's good you can retrain and do something.

0:16.0

Yeah, yeah.

0:17.0

Let's talk about working, learning, saving and making the most of living longer.

0:22.0

Phoenix Group is the UK's largest long-term savings and retirement business.

0:28.0

Search Phoenix Group living longer.

0:30.0

Pets brings so much joy.

0:32.0

From those happy greetings at the door to the warm cuddles on the sofa.

0:37.0

So give a little love back with Dental Life from Purina, a range of delicious chues made for dogs and tasty snacks for cats that help clean and support your pets, teeth and gums, essential for their overall well-being and a happy, healthy life. They give you plenty of smiles so look after

0:55.9

theirs with dental life. Pick up dental life in the pet food aisle. Hello and welcome to the bunker daily I am your host Alex Andro.

1:15.0

As Parliament enters its 20 day holiday hiatus people like me initially breathe a sigh of relief initially.

1:22.0

As is the case for all addicts, however, relief soon turns to despair. By about the

1:28.0

27th of December we can be found sitting at our desk, glass-eyed, refreshing Politico's London playbook page in the

1:36.3

hope something has happened, or trying to bait our racist aunt Catherine into a conversation

1:41.9

about immigration or in extreme cases, standing on street

1:46.2

corners, pleading with strangers passing by. Come on man, debate the Wellimboro by-election

1:51.8

with me just five minutes.

1:53.4

Christmas is to quote Winnie the Pooh, a togethery sort of holiday

1:58.6

and therefore a politics free zone. But why is that? The holidays are actually when most of us experience the effects of politics at their most extreme, food inflation, the cost of presence, maybe the impermanence of our housing, rail delays, may be

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