Queues, Sprouts and The Snowman...

Contents:

1. Still a religious & family festival for most
2. No room for Christmas?
3. Shopping, drinking and celebrating
4. I'm dreaming of an ethical Christmas...
5. After Christmas...
6. Christmas quotes
 

1. Still a religious & family festival for most

Christmas pews
A survey by ORB opinion pollster which interviewed 1,019 adults aged 18 or over between November 4 and 6 2005 found that:

• More than 4 out of 10 adults were planning to attend church at Christmas, amounting to 43% of Britain’s adult population.
• Christmas church attendance figures have been rising since the year 2000, from 33% in 2001, to 39% in 2003 and 43% in 2005.

• 46% of adults in city areas expected to attend church at Christmas; 46% in suburban areas, and 49% in rural areas.
• Attendance levels among 18 to 24 year olds were low, with only 28% planning to go to church during the Christmas period.
• Attendance was lowest among seaside town dwellers, of whom only 25% expected to go to church.
• Almost half the adult population in London (48%) said they would go to church on Christmas day.
• Across the country, 22% of adults from non-Christian faiths also said they would attend.

With 43% of adults in church during the Christmas period, this means that a total of approximately 25 million people of all ages will have taken part in a distinctly Christian Christmas celebration in 2005.

Reported in the Methodist Recorder, 22/29 December 2005.
 

Top ten carols
Silent Night is no longer the nation’s favourite carol according to a BBC open survey of thousands of Songs of Praise viewers carried out in 2005. It is replaced instead by In the Bleak Midwinter.
Silent Night, which has over the years been translated into 100 different languages, has been the undisputed favourite since 1998.
The complete top ten carol chart stands as follows:

Reported in The Church of England Newspaper, 23/30 December 2005.
 

Snowman’s Christmas
A Waterstone’s survey carried out by NOP in 2005 found that today’s children regard ‘The Snowman’ by Raymond Briggs as their favourite tale for Christmas.
The survey, which asked 1,000 children aged 7 to 16 about their favourite Christmas story found that in all UK regions except the South-west, the Nativity story fell behind ‘The Snowman’ and other tales such as ‘A Christmas Carol’ by Charles Dickens.

•  ‘The Snowman’ topped the chart with almost 25% of the vote.
•  ‘A Christmas Carol’ came second with 24%.
• ‘The Night before Christmas’ by Clement C Moore took third place with 20%.
• ‘Father Christmas’ by Raymond Briggs came fourth.
• The Nativity Story was only mentioned by 6% of children as their favourite Christmas story.

Reported in The Independent, 14 December 2005.
 

Christmas with the family
Christmas dinner with the extended family is on the way out according to a survey of 2,000 people carried out by the Genes Reunited history website.

• 1 in 3 gatherings over the Christmas period in 2005 involved four people or less.
• Only 1 in 4 households shared Christmas day with anyone beyond their immediate family of mothers, fathers, children and grandparents.
• Just 3% of people said they would invite their neighbours in for a drink.
• Only 15% said they would entertain friends.
• Despite decreasing numbers sharing the day, 80% said they enjoyed the traditional family Christmas.
• 30% of those aged under 25 said it was the best day of the year, compared with only 8% of those over 45.
• 64% of over 45s said they felt Christmas had ‘lost its magic’.
• However, only 47% of under 25s think it is not as good as it used to be.

Reported in The Daily Telegraph, 24 December 2005.

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2. No room for Christmas?

Nativity plays
A survey conducted by MORI in December 2004, in which a representative sample of teachers across England and Wales was polled, found that:

• 26% of teachers said their school would not be holding a carol concert.
• Only 44% worked in a school where a Nativity play would be staged.
• 15% of primary school teachers said that a Nativity play would not feature in their end of term events.
• A further 5% of primary school teachers questioned said that neither a Nativity play nor a carol concert would be included in their school’s activities.
• 50% of teachers said their school would be incorporating a secular Christmas celebration.
• And 25% said their school would be organising a multi-faith celebration.

• 62% of teachers (3 in 5) said they believe in God.
• 58% said they believe that Jesus was one of the prophets/rabbis/holy men.
• 54% said they believed Jesus was the Son of God.

MORI survey for the Times Educational Supplement, 17 December 2004.
 

No decorations
According to a Christmas 2005 survey by the employment law firm Peninsula which questioned 2,000 employers:

• About 70% of companies said they had banned Christmas decorations from the office in 2005 because of fears they would offend people from other faiths.
• Overall, Britons were predicted to spend £600 million on decorations in 2005, including 32 million metres of fairy lights to decorate their homes, with the average electricity bill going up £2.50.

Reported in the Daily Mail, 5 December 2005.
 

Cows and sprouts
Cards featuring Brussels sprouts and cows wearing antlers proved more popular than those featuring the baby Jesus during Christmas 2005 according to Card Aid.

• Though more than 33% of Christmas cards sold are now charity cards, there has been a steady decline in the number of religious Christmas cards being sold.
• People who wanted a ‘spiritual’ element chose angels or ‘peace cards’ featuring doves.
• The most popular Christmas cards in 2005 featured a cow with antlers tied on to its head, and a card featuring a photograph of Brussels sprouts.

A survey of local stationers, supermarkets and charity shops carried out by the Rev Robin Harvey, of Epsom in Surrey, found that only 23 card packs out of 2,140 had some kind of religious content.
The tradition of sending cards also seems to be waning. According to a Royal Mail spokesman 740 million Christmas cards were sent in 2004, with the overall volume of seasonal mail falling for the first time in 25 years.

Reported in The Daily Telegraph, 3 December 2005.

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3. Shopping, drinking and celebrating

Christmas tedium and spending
According to a survey carried out by ICM Research in December 2005:

• 85% of British consumers agree that “these days Christmas starts too early and is too commercialised”, while only 12% disagreed.
• 44% said they would be glad when the Christmas period came to an end; but 41% said they wouldn’t be.
• 23% said they were expecting to spend more money on their Christmas shopping for 2006.
• 61% said they were expecting to spend about the same.
• 15% said they were expecting to spend less on their 2006 Christmas shopping.

ICM ‘Retail Week Christmas Spending Survey’, 2-4 December 2005.
 

Last-minute shopping
According to a survey by TNS which questioned 1,008 individuals in December 2005, British shoppers were predicted to spend £9.58 billion on presents in the week before Christmas in 2005, £1.91 billion more than in 2004.

• Around 1.1 million people were expected to spend more than £1,000 during the seven days before Christmas.
• A further 2.88 million were expected to spend between £501 and £1,000.
• Men were more likely to leave their Christmas shopping to the last minute, with the average man expected to spend £276 during that last week.
• In comparison, women were expected to spend the lower amount of £196 during the week before Christmas.

Reported in The Guardian, 19 December 2005.
 

Miscellaneous snippets about shopping

• Each person takes an average of 15 hours to complete his/her Christmas shopping.
• 4 million Brussels sprouts are usually purchased in the week before Christmas.
• £10 billion is the average amount borrowed across Britain at Christmas to foot the bill.
• 41% more alcohol is drunk during the Christmas holidays than the monthly UK average.
• Each person spends an average of £33 on last-minute panic purchases.
• 25% of all Christmas shopping time is spent in queues.

Reported in The Independent, 12 December 2006.
 

Working Christmas
A survey from Fuijitsu Siemens Computers in 2005 revealed that:

• More than 2 in 5 staff planned to log on to their work emails over the Christmas break.
• Londoners were the worst offenders with 51% planning to monitor their work email over the Christmas holidays.
• North-east England and Humberside were the lesser offenders with 35% admitting they would look up their email.
• Almost half of men (48%) say they will check their inbox, in contrast to 33% of women.

Reported in The Guardian, 19 December 2005.
 

Christmas hangovers
According to research published in the British Medical Journal in 2005:

• Hangovers cost the UK about £2 billion a year in lost earnings through sickness absence.
• At Christmas, higher alcohol consumption leads to a 0.4% increase in fatal poisonings for every 1% increase in sales of spirits

Reported in The Daily Telegraph, 23 December 2006.
 

iChristmas
A new Christmas tradition has emerged in recent years with the advent of the iPod.

• Music downloads between Christmas Eve and Christmas Day 2005 were expected to display at least a 15% increase in activity compared with the same period in 2004.
• According to data from Hitwise, an online intelligence company, there was a surge of visits to download sites, with traffic to Apple’s iTunes Music Store – the most popular web music provider – rising by 50% on Christmas Day.
• Estimates for iPod sales throughout 2005 were of 37 million units worldwide, with over 25% - at least 10 million – sold over the Christmas period.

Reported in The Times, 29 December 2005.
 

Christmas fraud
Accountancy firm BDO Stoy Hayward Bank warned that research shows a dramatic increase in employee fraud since 2003, soaring to £78 million in 2005, an increase of 81% on the previous year.
The research, based on all reported cases from the Serious Fraud Office, the Department of Trade and Industry, the Metropolitan Police and the press revealed that:

• Employee fraud accounted for 20% of all fraud in 2005 compared with only 12% in 2004 and 13% in 2003.
• Total cases for 2005 numbered 182 at a value of £399 million.
• Types of fraud by workers range from abuse of pre-signed blank cheques, letter heads and authorisation forms given out to cover the holiday period, to changes made to computer systems.

According to BDO Christmas is a favourite time for fraudsters because “management’s eyes are off the ball in the run-up to Christmas”.

Reported in The Independent, 3 January 2006.

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4. I’m dreaming of an ethical Christmas…

Good will abounds
A survey of 2,000 people carried out by YouGov for the homeless charity Crisis in 2005 found that:

• 1 in 4 Britons said he/she had either already signed up with a charity or was more likely to volunteer to help in the sector at Christmas time than in previous years.
• 4 out of 10 people said that the death toll from events in the previous months had made them more aware of the importance of the family during the festive season.
• 1 in 3 said they had become more concerned about the suffering of others at home and abroad.
• 1 in 6 felt that their sense of community had been strengthened in the wake of the London bombings and other disasters.

Reported in The Independent, 6 December 2005.
 

Ethical goods
According to a report by the Co-operative Bank, spending on ‘ethical goods’ in the UK rose by nearly a sixth to almost £26 billion in 2004.

• Funds invested ethically exceeded £10 billion for the first time.
• Consumers buying items that offset climate change spent £3.4 billion.
• Spending ethically on food surpassed £4 billion for the first time.
• Spending on ethical fashion reached £680 million.
• The amount spent on Fair trade produce increased by 52.2% to more than £140 million.
• The amount spent on energy-efficient electrical appliances rose by 23.3% to £1.3 billion.
• Spending on eco-friendly cleaning products rose to £13 million from £11 million the previous year.

The survey found that 54% of those questioned agreed with the statement “As a consumer, I can make a difference to how responsibly a company behaves”, compared with only 19% agreeing with the same statement the previous year.

Reported in The Times, 12 December 2005.
 

Christmas gifts with a difference
Christian charities reported a boom in alternative and ethical Christmas gifts in 2005.

• Christian Aid’s sales target rose to £2 million in goats, worms, fishing nets, latrines and the like.
• Traidcraft confirmed that sales in November were up by 28% on the same period the previous year.
• Tearcraft reported an overall growth of 10% during 2005 and said that fair trade gifts “were capturing people’s imaginations”.

Reported in the Methodist Recorder, 22 December 2005.
 

Christmas CO2
According to the Institute of Physics, during the 2005 Christmas holidays, Britons released almost 2 million tons of extra carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

• A typical set of twinkling Christmas lights for every family would use up 3.5bn kilowatt-hours (HWh) of electricity, releasing 1.6 million tons of carbon dioxide.
• Each household watches television an average of 30 hours per week during the festive season; enough to consume an extra 61.5m KWh of electricity and generating more than 28,000 tons of CO2 (the same amount released by almost 50 full return flights across the Atlantic in a Jumbo jet).
• The average 10 million turkeys roasted each year at a cost of 29 million KWh and 13,500 tons of CO2 would be enough to fill 2,695 hot-air balloons.
• Trips to visit friends and family release around 281,000 tons of CO2 (assuming every family travels 100 miles).
• Keeping the house warm while keeping the door open for carol singers equates to 338 tons of CO2.

On the positive front, the Institute of Physics lets us know that in 2004 Britons burnt 134,100 million calories going Christmas shopping – enough exercise to burn off 725 million mince pies.

Reported in The Guardian, 21 December 2005.
 

More Christmas waste

• Britons send nearly 1 billion Christmas cards every year.
• 6 million trees were bought in 2004, but only 1 in 6 were recycled, leading to an extra 9,000 tons of rubbish being dumped. 
• Each year, Christmas leaves more than £1.2 billion-worth of unwanted presents in its wake.
• Nearly 2 million Britons will go abroad this Christmas, creating millions of tons of CO2 in the process.
• A typical UK Christmas dinner, which often includes Australian wine, American cranberry sauce, South African carrots, Dutch Brussels sprouts and Israeli potatoes, may have travelled 30,000 miles from producers and growers, generating 20 million tons of CO2.
• More than 8,000 tons of wrapping paper is used at Christmas, which the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs estimates is enough to wrap the whole island of Guernsey.
• We consume far more bottles, cans and paper at Christmas than any other time of year, with more than 3 million extra tons of waste. Our bins overflow with an extra 750 million bottles and 500 million drink cans.
• About 80,000 tons of old clothes also get thrown out every Christmas.

Reported in The Independent, 12 December 2006.

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5. After Christmas…

That new year resolution!
A nationwide survey commissioned by Boots in 2005 revealed that 80% of Britons had at some point vowed to change their lives in the new year but that 50% had failed to keep their pledge and often kept making the same resolution each year.
The survey, which questioned 1,050 Britons also found that:

• In the past decade about 50% had vowed to lose weight and eat more healthily, to get fit or to stop smoking.
• Nearly 25% had resolved to cut down drinking or to de-stress.
• However, at least 50% of those who make resolutions fail each year to keep them.
• 33% of Britons admit to making and breaking the same vows every time.
• More than 50% of those questioned admitted they lack the willpower, 25% say they aren’t dedicated enough, and 1 in 10 blames lack of support for their failure.
• 60% cited their health as the main motive for making resolutions, but 33% said it was self-improvement.
• 1 in 3 admitted smoking was their most unhealthy habit, whereas another 33% said it was lack of exercise and 20% admitted it was eating junk food.
• More than 10% of respondents aged 35 to 44 had resolved to leave his/her partner, with 40% saying they vow to leave their partner every year.
• 8% of respondents say they have managed to break a resolution within ten seconds, 1 in 6 couldn’t event keep it for one hour and 66% have failed the one-month mark.

Reported in The Times, 31 December 2005.
 

Recycling and re-gifting
The post-Christmas season is traditionally busy one for Ebay, the world’s largest auction site with 168 million registered users.  A survey released by the company in 2005 found that:

• Over 50% of Americans say they ‘re-gift’ presents they do not like, will not use, or do not fit.
• 11% say they have previously sold an unwanted gift online.
• Among 25-34 year olds the percentage of those who had sold unwanted gifts online rose to 22%.

• 15% of UK online shoppers planned to sell unwanted Christmas gifts online.
• A further 35% were considering it, with women more likely to do so than men.

Reported in the Financial Times, 27 December 2005.

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6. Christmas Quotes

‘It’s not the Christmas pudding that the authorities will be coming for, but the Christmas crib, if some people have their way. And it’s because of a quite wrong-headed idea that our neighbours from other religious traditions will be offended by Christian symbols… The truth is that they are usually much happier with the idea of a Christian festival than with some general excuse to have a good time in midwinter.’
Rev Dr Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, 2005.

‘We are still, overwhelmingly, a Christian society. Yes, the number of people who regularly go to church is relatively small, and many fewer than 40 or 50 years ago. But in the last census 72% described themselves as “Christian”. They didn’t have to do so. It wasn’t compulsory to say so.’
‘Taking Christ out of Christmas, and pretending that you can celebrate Christmas without acknowledgement of the profound religious origin and power of the festival, is simply wrong. We live in a free country. If someone wants to celebrate Saturnalia – the pagan winter festival – that’s fine, but don’t pretend it’s Christmas.’
Jack Straw, The Times, 24 December 2005.

‘Surely we do the whole concept of “tolerance” a disservice by implying that to accept other cultures is to efface our own.’
Lionel Shriver, writer, The Guardian 7 December 2005.

‘As a Jew, I find the religious aspects of the December festivities far more understandable and acceptable than the – pagan – commercial frenzy, which “Winterval” encourages to continue unabated.’
Rachel Montagu, Assistant Education Officer, The Council of Christians and Jews, 2005.

‘A [Lambeth] council spokesman said: ”The term winter lights simply reflects the fact that a number of religious festivals take place over the winter period when the lights are switched on.”’
Ruth Gledhill, The Times, 2 November 2005.

‘Away in a Manger and Once in Royal David’s City are the sweetest and yet most formidable expression of the power of love, of the babe in the manger, weak and helpless, yet representing the greatest, most powerful thing in the world.
‘[Britain] may not be a fervently Christian country today in practice and observation: the British are not religious to the degree that, say, Americans are. But the tradition is embedded and remains, and is entitled to be celebrated and honoured at our great festivals, such as Christmas.’
Mary Kenny, The Daily Mail, 3 November 2005.

‘Despite our efforts to keep him out, God intrudes. The life of Jesus is bracketed by two impossibilities: a virgin’s womb and an empty tomb. Jesus entered our world through a door marked “No Entrance” and left through a door marked “No Exit”.’
Peter Larson, ‘Prism’ Jan/Feb 2001.
 

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