The PC stagnation hasn’t quite hit the banks of the River Main yet. Blair’s Christmas card bloomer a few years ago changed things slightly in the UK, but no such return to tradition seems to have taken place in Germany.
You barely feel it’s Christmas around the Frankfurt streets. In fact, the only indication of the festive season near my flat is the splattering of hoardings from local politicians eager to get their twopence (twocents?) in before the regional elections in the new year.
I’m back in London now, but I think I’m right in remembering that the left-wing Die Linke kept Weihnachten out of it completely on their ad; the centre-left SPD mentioned it in small print; and the conservative CDU splashed a massive picture of local MP Ulrich Caspar hiding inside a Father Christmas suit (which itself is a rather secular symbol). That’s a clear shift in style from the left to the right, but still it’s all rather anti-Christian, isn’t it?
Maybe the fact that 25% of Frankfurters are foreigners is a factor. It surely is. But it’s not racist to celebrate Christmas, is it?
Anyway, I should stop turning into Richard Littlejohn and wish you all a happy festive season. Or a merry Christmas, if you’re a fascist white supremacist bigot.
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