SO here we are at the start of December on the countdown to Christmas. But what does Christmas even mean anymore in this world we’ve made?

I’m no Christian or worshipper of any God, but I believe in the message of Christianity: of trying very hard to love our fellow men and women, and especially lifting up the poor. But the spirit of Christmas becomes harder and harder to find in this country each passing year. We’re turning into hollow cruel people, run by hollow cruel governments.

We hear at this time of year - usually from the most bitter and ‘unchristian’ amongst us - that there’s a “War on Christmas”. It’s simply code for: “I wish it was still the 1950s and everyone was white.”

But rather than this fantasy war, there’s a real assault on Christmas going on. I’m not talking about self-indulgence at Christmas; that’s a forgivable sin and we’re all guilty of it - big deal. The world is hard and getting harder, why shouldn’t we enjoy life when we can - especially if we leaven self-reward with some warmth to others?

The War on Christmas I’m speaking of is the killing of what Christmas is about: the killing of kindness. It feels particularly sinful at this time of year to see the wickedness we permit and the wickedness we inflict on those who are the weakest.

This isn’t to say that you’re cruel, that you aren’t kind, that you don’t try to do good in the world, or that you wilfully permit evil to happen. This is to say that all of us - every man and woman in this nation - is culpable for the society we’ve created. If we took this responsibility and owned it then perhaps our society - crucially “our” society - might be better.

Last night, I read in mounting disbelief about anti-migrant protestors in Hastings, England, who blocked an RNLI lifeboat going out on a rescue mission. They shouted: “Don’t bring any more of those home, we’re full up!”

There can be no soft words here. These people wanted other human beings to die simply because they were “foreign”. To dehumanise another person is, in truth, to surrender your own humanity.

But this is where we are. You didn’t do it. I didn’t do it. But it’s happening in our country. Nor is this any time to get hung up on the term “our country”. For any Scottish nationalist who might start shouting about this happening in England not Scotland, please take a look at yourself. For the time being at least, this is the UK and we all bear collective responsibility.

Just before I read of those brave, British patriots in Hastings acting little better than some brown-shirted Nazis in Germany 1938, news came out that deaths of homeless people in Scotland has risen. “Homeless people”. They all had names, you know. All 256 of them. Forty more of these forgotten and disregarded souls lost their lives in 2020 than in 2019. Deaths have been rising for years.

For those who might want to say hatred of migrants is an English problem, official figures showed Scotland in 2019 had the highest homeless death rate when compared to England and Wales: 52.2 per million of the population aged 15-74, compared to 18.0 in England and 14.3 in Wales.

Forget the constitution for once, when it comes to the sins happening inside the borders of this country the UK, we’re all truly in it together.

We step over homeless people every day of our lives in the big cities of this nation. We could stop this in an instant - end homelessness right now - if we told our politicians that enough was enough and they could no longer allow fellow human beings to die on our watch. Build homes, put in support services, punitively and publicly sanction Scottish councils which leave any citizen without a home. Enact those laws. It’s not utopian; it would simply be the mark of a society which cares. But we don’t care, or at least not enough of us care.

Ten years ago, I’d never heard of a food bank outside the United States. Today, these monstrosities are everywhere. We don’t even bat an eyelid anymore that our society is so coldly brutal families have to rely on charity not to starve. The shame should burn us forever.

But nothing shames anymore. On a societal level - clearly, not the individual level - the idea of being kind and unselfish is all but extinguished. Our society now has a whole cadre of people who struggle so hard with the notion of wearing masks or getting vaccinated in the midst of a pandemic that they’re effectively happy to see others die. Their liberty is being infringed, they cry: the liberty to destroy the lives of others; to allow a pandemic to prosper; to ensure the continuation of Covid crushes our economy and kills our elderly. Yet they are the victims.

It’s hard to think of these people without seeing them as angry, spoilt children. And perhaps that lies at the heart of all our problems. We are essentially a society dominated by selfish infants: who’d allow the weak to die at sea, who’d allow the weak to die on the street or in hostels, who’d allow children to eat from food banks, who’d allow the world to burn because they simply don’t care enough.

What do I do to make it better, you might rightly ask? Shamefully, not enough. Like so many, we can all carry out little acts of personal kindness for those in need. That’s no solution, though - we know that. Crucially, however, I can raise my voice: in this article. In truth, that makes me no different to you. We can all raise our voices today. We can all vote. We can all demand change and better people in our governments.

This isn’t about forging a perfect world or overthrowing the establishment. It’s just about each of us trying to demand the changes we know need to be made. If we can be personally kind throughout this month, why can’t we demand kindness in our name the rest of the year?

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