Surely someone, somewhere has made a Christmas card out of this quote:
I shall be taking you to Old London town in the country of UK, ruled over by Good King Wenceslas. Now human beings worship the great god Santa, a creature with fearsome claws and his wife Mary. And every Christmas Eve, the people of UK go to war with the country of Turkey. They then eat the Turkey people for Christmas dinner, like savages!
To the uninitiated, this quote comes from an episode of the British TV drama Doctor Who. In the episode, a group of alien tourists are on a cruise ship in orbit around earth. An excursion to the surface is arranged, and these words are those of the cruise director who, with a shady degree in “Earthonomics”, proves to be something of an unreliable guide.
It all makes me wonder, however, in this less than biblical age, if this description, or something like it, might not be closer to the common understanding of Christmas (or of other aspects of Christian orthodoxy) than we might think.