John Knox banned Christmas

     There is now no escaping the fact that Christmas is coming - yet again. By the time you are a pensioner you have seen quite a lot of them and perhaps find it difficult to get quite as enthusiastic as before.
      However yesterday I walked to the centre of Edinburgh - to Princes Street and Princes Street Gardens below Edinburgh Castle. I have to admit - it was magical.
     Edinburgh now has a Christmas Festival there - a winter wonderland including a giant ferris wheel, an old fashioned  helter skelter and roundabout, a skating rink, a German market selling beautiful things and gluhwein and bratwurst  - all lit up and full of happy people of every nationality.
     How strange to think that no so very long ago Christmas was not celebrated here. John Knox banned it when he brought about the reformation of the church (about 1550)
     For Knox, Christmas was a piece of Popish superstition, an "abomination" to be shunned, like the pollution of idols and punished by the civil magistrate

    Even as recently as the 1950's my father's business in the Highlands provided no special holiday at Christmas for the workers. 

    The BIG holiday in Scotland has always been Hogmanay and New Year  - a heathen festival - celebrated with much drinking. 

    John Knox would be turning in his grave!