Sunday, December 27, 2009

Has Archbishop Cranmer been at the communion wine?

It's been an odd day at Archbishop Cranmer, usually one of the more thoughtful Conservative blogs - or at least as thoughtful as a consistent High Tory can allow himself to be.

He reprints David Cameron's "New Year message" in full and without comment, introducing him as "the next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland".

The more arrogance like that we see from Conservatives, the greater the chance of Cameron failing to win the next election.

Far more odd is Cranmer's meditation on the White House Christmas tree. Through an excess of zeal in involving "community groups" the President has ended up with a decoration that includes a portrait of Chairman Mao - not someone whom I would want to commemorate on my tree either.

But in the course of his complaint Cranmer asserts that the Christmas tree has "returned to its pagan roots".

When has the Christmas tree been anything but pagan? It has never had a part in the Nativity story. Nor by placing a fairy on top are we commemorating a particularly painful martyrdom.

His conclusion is that:
Obama honouring Mao on a Holiday Tree is just a Communist glorifying a Communist.
Now this really puzzles me. If you are going to use your blog to retail the conventional US Republican nutjob view that Obama is a Communist, why bother to dress yourself up as a 16th century Archbishop of Canterbury?

I suggest the writer of this blog gives up the frocks, buys a rifle and heads for the wilds of Montana. He will find plenty of soulmates there.

1 comment:

Oranjepan said...

I understand the Christmas tree in Trafalgar Sq is a gift from Norway to mark the friendship between our two countries resulting from the liberation of their country from the oppressive yoke of nazidom.

If that's pagan, excellent.

It's also clear then that high tories either support the conquest of smaller nations while continuing to oppose voluntary EU integration or they don't properly think through the consequences of their choices.