Harry's Place

Kevin Arscott of The Disinformed has put together an excellent essay in which he debunks the myth of ‘Winterval’, the supposed politically correct ‘rebranding of Christmas’ that crops up in lazy news stories around this time of year with predictable regularity. The summary and download link for the report can be found here.

Some excerpts:

What started as a myth that one council had rebranded or renamed Christmas became a pluralised, open-ended narrative that ‘councils’ and ‘authorities’ were in fact rebranding or renaming  Christmas as ‘Winterval’.

It then mutated from a simple rebranding to a calculated attack on Christianity by  ‘atheists’, ‘Muslims’ or the ‘PC Brigade’ who feared offending ‘other faiths’ or ‘ethnic  minorities’. In one extreme example the South Wales Echo claimed that Winterval  was the result of ‘Virulent attacks on religion by atheists’ which had led to ‘new rules  such as Christmas being renamed as “Winterval”’. Who created and enforced this  ‘rule’ and who it applied to was not explained in the article. In all, at least 15 articles  directly claim that Christmas was renamed Winterval because of a fear of offending  ‘other faiths’. At least a further 10 articles directly claim that Winterval was used to  avoid offending ‘ethnic minorities’.

…

Although the story you are about to read focuses ostensibly on the Winterval myth, it is, I think, about much more than that. The origin, longevity and evolution of the myth raises many fundamental concerns about the way modern journalism publishes stories and pursues agendas. As the story unfolds it becomes necessary to question the symbiotic relationships between journalists, columnists, church leaders, politicians and the media consumer.

Perhaps the most important discussion point that arises from the narrative is whether we can any longer believe – as Nick Davies generally argues in his book Flat Earth News – that bad journalism is largely a result of incompetent misinformation. The alternative argument is that media myths persist because the media creates, legitimises and repeats powerful media narratives that fulfil the prejudices of their owners, editors and readers. The Winterval myth provides the cornerstone for the ongoing media campaign against multi-culturalism, diversity, political correctness and the perceived Islamification of Britain. The Winterval myth has been woven into an invented narrative that posits that Christianity and Christmas is under attack due to the intolerance of other faiths and ethnicities (in reality, Muslims) to create an inverse intolerance of other faiths and ethnicities.

This – at times violent – intolerance is best demonstrated by the recent assertion of the English Defence League [EDL] leader Stephen Lennon in an interview with the Times. Lennon claimed  that the EDL are in the process of ‘sending letters to every council saying that if you change the name of Christmas we are coming in our thousands and shutting your town down’.

Gene adds: I posted this at Christmastime six years ago, but I think it’s worth reading or rereading.