Now The Daily Mail Cancels Winterval
WINTERVAL is cancelled:
We stated in an article on 26 September that Christmas has been renamed in various places Winterval. Winterval was the collective name for a season of public events, both religious and secular, which took place in Birmingham in 1997 and 1998. We are happy to make clear that Winterval did not rename or replace Christmas’ - The Daily Mail Corrections
Melanie Phillips claimed that:
Christmas has been renamed in various places ‘Winterval’.
Winterval is a media myth. It never existed.
Minoroity Thought tells us:
Winterval was in fact a way for Birmingham City Council to more effectively (and more cheaply) market a series of winter festivals, including Christmas. The idea that Christmas was actually renamed “Winterval” and therefore effectively abolished simply isn’t true.
In 1998 the BBC reported:
Birmingham City Council used the phrase to describe its programme of festive family events over Christmas and the New Year.
The change is being made because city council officials hope to create a more multi-cultural atmosphere in keeping with the city’s mix of ethnic groups.
But the media loved it:
Pope Benedict XVI yesterday made an impassioned plea for Britain to return to its Christian values and condemned the “politically correct brigade” who dismiss Christmas…In recent years there have been cases of schools cancelling Christmas Nativity plays for fear of offending non-Christians and replacing them with winterval festivals.
Star:
Speaking to a packed Westminster Hall in London, he [Pope] urged people to turn their backs on the use of words like “Winterval” to describe the festival of Jesus’s birth.
Sun:
He [Pope] urged his VIP audience to use their “respective spheres of influence” to help turn back a tide that has seen Christmas renamed Winterval.
The Pope never uttered the word Winterval.
Eric Pickles was not listening:
“We should actively celebrate the Christian basis of Christmas, and not allow politically correct Grinches to marginalise Christianity and the importance of the birth of Christ. The War on Christmas is over, and likes of Winterval, Winter Lights and Luminous deserve to be in the dustbin of history.
Perhaps the most notorious of the anti-Christmas rebrandings is Winterval, in Birmingham, and when you telephone the Birmingham city council press office to ask about it, you are met first of all with a silence that might seasonably be described as frosty.
“We get this every year,” a press officer sighs, eventually. “It just depends how many rogue journalists you get in any given year. We tell them it’s bollocks, but it doesn’t seem to make much difference.”
According to an official statement from the council, Winterval – which ran in 1997 and 1998, and never since – was a promotional campaign to drive business into Birmingham’s newly regenerated town centre. It began in early November and finished in January.
During the part of that period traditionally celebrated as Christmas, “there was a banner saying Merry Christmas across the front of the council house, Christmas lights, Christmas trees in the main civil squares, regular carol-singing sessions by school choirs, and the Lord Mayor sent a Christmas card with a traditional Christmas scene wishing everyone a Merry Christmas”.
To make things worse, it was not a myth copied and perpetuated solely by the tabloids; the broadsheets were equally responsible for repeating it, and perhaps did more to legitimise it than the tabloids. The Sunday Times, for instance, used the myth as a question and answer in three quizzes, twice in 1998 and then again in 2000.
Between them, the Times and the Sunday Times have in fact managed to repeat the myth 40 times in total since 1998, an achievement only surpassed by the Daily Mail, which leads the field with 44 mentions. The Daily Telegraph managed to repeat it 22 times, only slightly behind the Express (26), and a bit further behind the Sun (31). The Daily Mirror only seems to have repeated the myth on four occasions – less than the Guardian, which has repeated it on six occasions, even though it did eventually debunk the myth in several different articles.
More.
Posted: 8th, November 2011 | In: News Comments (9) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink
November 9th, 2011 at 11:51 am
That’s what you get when you publish something by Melanie Phillips. What that woman does is not journalism, it’s sensationalistic rubbish.
She has intentionally misrepresented facts time and time again to suit her ignorant agenda.
November 9th, 2011 at 11:31 am
Nothing wrong in getting DOGmatic about this…
Of course all the new religions are just sexist anyway
November 9th, 2011 at 11:02 am
I don’t have that big a problem with Christians. I regard them in the same manner I regard trainspotters. Practioners of a slightly bizzare past-time and somewhat embarrassing but as long as they don’t encroach upon me; then I’ll take the stock British response of ‘if it is not bothering anyone else, let them be’.
It is when a minority of them start to get involved in trying to force the education system to peddle nonsense to children (like creationism), or trying to get politicians to force through legislation that would turn back hard won women’s rights (the pro life brigade) that I start to get annoyed by them.
But I see them in no more positive or negative way than I see any type of believer.
And I’ll happily celebrate ‘Christmas’ without being a hypocrite because it is NOT a Christian festival. It is a festival that had Christian mythology imposed upon it.
November 9th, 2011 at 10:46 am
Christianity is for life, not just for Christmas. Or Should that be dogs? Christianity is for Dogs, not just for Christmas? No, I think I was right the first time
November 9th, 2011 at 10:25 am
Apart from the roads, the aquaducts, the sanitation, the medicine, the education, the public health….. WHAT HAVE THE ROMANS EVER DONE FOR US?
But seriously, the point remains about Melanie Phillips and her silly attacks on the de-Christianisation of the nation and taking Christ out of Christmas.
Think I’d take her more seriously if she was ACTUALLY a Christian.
November 9th, 2011 at 9:54 am
Bloody Romans coming over here. Taking our jobs, taking our wimmin. Putting their churches in our sacred groves. Roads? What are they for eh? Ridgeways was good enough for us. You knew where you were with a ridgeway. If the gods had meant you to walk in a straight line they wouldn’t have put all those hills in the way now would they
November 9th, 2011 at 9:45 am
Well June, Halloween is another case in point of course.
In Celtic Paganism a perfectly lovely tradition; celebrating the harvest and honouring the dead (Samhain). The Christians come along and make the day All Souls and the day after All Saints. And then they start to smear previous traditions by associating it with evil and witchcraft.
And then we end up with the loathesome Americanised commercial idiocy of Halloween.
November 9th, 2011 at 9:14 am
The Celtic Pagans get pretty miffed too…
November 9th, 2011 at 9:07 am
I always find the media outrage over Christmas being de-Christianised to be ridiculous anyway.
It is a PAGAN FESTIVAL. The festival of Yule or the winter solstice. Practically everything we associate with it (Christmas trees, holly, mistletoe, yule logs, carousing) has its origins in pre-Christian tradition. Even carol singing is a throwback to the old pagan tradition of wassailing. Perhaps native Anglo-Saxons should be taking issue with the Romans for messing about with perfectly good traditions with their imposed religion (for it was the Romans who introduced Christianity to Northern Europe).
And Melanie Phillips is a pastiche of self-righteous indignation. I don’t think even she believes the crap she peddles.