Bishop rubbishes Christmas carols as silly, inaccurate and embarrassing

By Arthur Martin
Last updated at 9:13 AM on 30th November 2009

Rt Rev Nick Baines, the Bishop of Croydon, claims carols are 'nonsense'

Christmas carols are 'nonsense' and have turned the birth of Jesus Christ into a fairy story, a respected bishop has claimed.

The Right Reverend Nick Baines, the Bishop of Croydon, said some of the nation's favourite carols were 'embarrassing' and 'inaccurate'.

And he warned that the songs encouraged people to regard the story of Christ's birth in the same light as Father Christmas or a pantomime tale.

The bishop was particularly scornful of Away In A Manger - a popular feature of nativity plays - which he said 'cannot be sung without embarrassment'.

And he claimed some carols - particularly Once In Royal David's City - foster images of Victorian 'sentiment' rather than the Biblical account of Christ's birth.

In Why Wish You A Merry Christmas - a book published by the Church of England - the bishop also criticised schools which introduce snakes and grizzly bears into nativity plays, saying it 'relegated the story to fictional fantasy'.

'I always find it a bizarre sight when I see parents and grandparents at a nativity play singing Away In A Manger as if it was actually related to reality,' he added.

'I can understand children being quite taken with the sort of baby of whom it can be said "no crying he makes", but how can any adult sing this without embarrassment?'

He said Jesus would have been 'abnormal' if he had not cried as a baby. 'If we sing nonsense, is it any surprise children grow into adults and throw out the tearless Jesus with Father Christmas and other fantasy figures?' he added.

'Once In Royal David's City has Jesus as "our childhood's pattern" - even though we know almost nothing of his childhood - and invites children to be "mild, obedient, good as he", which means what, exactly? This sounds suspiciously like Victorian behaviour control.

Carols and Christmas songs used in Nativity plays and Yuletide services have been branded embarrassing by the Bishop of Croydon

'Some of the traditional carols perpetuate images of Christmas that have more to do with Victorian sentiment than the story we actually read in the gospels.'

By 'romanticising the festival and commercialising our culture' Christmas has become ' tame, fantastic and anaemic', he claimed.

But Bruce Grindlay, former director of music at Christ's Hospital, Sussex, now headmaster of Sutton Valence School in Maidstone, Kent, said traditional carols were an integral part of the festive period.

'Some carols have a 800-year history and are so entwined into the fabric of our society that we often don't need to give pupils the words for the first verse,' he said.

'Younger children need a sanitised version of the nativity. It may not always be challenging but you need a certain amount of a saccharin glow to draw people in.'

Yesterday, the bishop insisted his comments were part of a wider discussion about the importance of carols and Christmas.

'Some of the carols we sing perfectly explain or describe the mystery of the incarnation,' he said.

'I love carols and I will be singing them this Christmas, as I do every year. But some carols are better than others.' 

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