The Wax Terrorist

In a population this size it's inevitable, I suppose, that there's one person, somewhere, who feels so strongly about Christmas, its Christian message and the sanctity thereof that they'd be prepared to smash up a blasphemous image. And yet, I'm still surprised by the nut-nut who went all the way to Madame Tussauds to wreck a nativity scene featuring Posh and Becks. A spokesman said: "I can confirm that a visitor launched an unprovoked attack" - by which, I suppose, is meant that Posh and Becks didn't say or do anything at all rude to the attacker. This is to be expected. They are, after all, waxworks.

Now the Tussauds nativity was rather oblique in its message - Posh and Becks, for starters, don't epitomise the values of Mary and Joseph. They aren't poor, noble or particularly devoted to one another, nor was either of them inseminated by the Godhead at any point. The wise men in this same scene were George Bush, Tony Blair and Prince Philip. I can't decide which of those people makes it most obvious that this was meant in jest. Kylie is an angel. That's probably about as oblique as it gets. She is innocuous, she does look a bit like an angel, and what do angels do, apart from be innocuous and look nice? Oh, they fly. Kylie definitely can't fly. If anything, I'd say the tableau was more disrespectful to the worship of celebrity than to the worship of God - no way are Posh and Becks fame's golden couple any more. They'd have been better off with Thierry Henry and Nicole.

Still, how could this be offensive to Christians? Does it cast doubt on the veracity of the nativity narrative? Not really. Does it diminish the humility of the shepherds by making one of them Hugh Grant? Only up to a point. Is it any more offensive than a primary school, say, putting on a nativity that involves monkeys, which were never, to my certain knowledge, accredited witnesses to the birth of Christ? (My goddaughter was a monkey - this pleased her greatly. I think monkeys are considered more feminine than snakes or bears.)

It occurs to me that, since I don't believe in God, having a goddaughter is easily as blasphemous as the Tussauds tableau, since I am appropriating the language and conventions of Christianity to describe a relationship that has basis in faith. Luckily, the Posh and Becks attacker doesn't have my address, or I'd be in big trouble.

The wax terrorist, while doubtless among the most extreme of the Christmas defenders, is not alone - the Sun staged an extraordinary rant last week in which, with characteristic cognitive dissonance, it insisted on the one hand that the festival could accommodate all races and faiths, and on the other, tub-thumped about its "Britishness", and how that must be protected from the unfestive foreignness that certain right-on London boroughs were determined to impose. Christmas is about as British as ciabatta - it's a mistake to assume that just because you like something a lot, you must have invented it. I learned that lesson the hard way when I argued with an Australian about the genesis of the crumpet.

And more widely, it is a common complaint, even among atheists, that consumerism in general has corrupted the quiddity of Christmas. This is absolutely true - if there's a message at all in the original story, it's manifestly not that you have to buy loads and loads of pointless tat and eat too much in order to express a selfless and important bond of care with your fellow man.

But this is commerce all over. It appropriates everything, every icon, every emotional resonance that's ever touched the collective psyche, every stirring phrase that might usefully bypass the rational mind and induce us to buy stuff we don't need. It has pinched every atom of the visual and verbal experience of love in order to flog skincare products. It has taken the language and imagery of political revolution, time and again, to sell rubbish songs by Madonna and persuade us to change our computer interfacing systems, should we happen to have a small business.

Only by the most monumental effort of parataxis can any scheme of thought or creativity defend itself against some day being used to make a daft product sound cool. Capitalism is a born thief. So, really, given that Christmas is a relatively trivial event, pagan to begin with anyway, scarcely representing the sine qua non of faith to any serious Christian, embraced by everyone, regardless of faith, as a good excuse to get really drunk, we should be pleased that it's been turned into this orgy of consumption (that's as in purchasing, not tuberculosis - that would be a very risky and unpleasant orgy). So much has been swiped that was more important. Jingle bells is the least of our worries.