When I was a small child in the UK, rationing was still in force. Bread, meat, butter, potatoes were all rationed. In spite of that, at Christmas, we always seemed to have enough to eat and my parents managed to buy presents. My memory of my early childhood Christmases is not one of today’s excesses that don’t seem to particularly satisfy anyone, but of warm, cheerful (well, apart from my aunt Ada) family gatherings. I didn’t know it then, of course, but my parents made the necessary sacrifices to create a merry Christmas.

From the BBC:

[flv:https://www.anglicansamizdat.net/wordpress/videos/Christmas1947.flv 760 440]

Archive footage shows how British people experienced the run up to Christmas in 1947, one of the toughest of the post-War ‘Austerity’ years.

Bread became rationed, joining other staple items like meat, butter and potatoes, and queues in shops were common.

Sterling was also experiencing a currency crisis, resulting from the UK’s post-War debt to America.

Contrast that with Rowan Williams’ Christmas meanderings in which he bemoans the plight of today’s poor – who are actually considerably more wealthy than even the moderately well-off in the late 40s.

‘No government in its right mind wants poverty. One positive thing about aspects of the current spending review is a clear intention to put things in place that will actually reduce poverty and help people out of the traps of dependency.

‘But also we need to beware of the real temptation to take it for granted that if people still suffer, even after reforms undertaken with good intentions, then somehow it is their fault.

‘Life at the grass roots is always going to be less black and white, and it isn’t surprising if a lot of people, already insecure, start feeling even more insecure. At the very least, there’s a job of communication to do.

‘Hard-working and honest people who do their best really do face problems; so do people with disabilities, with mental health issues or limited mobility.
‘There are doubtless some who make the most out of the benefits culture (just as there are some who have made the most out of other kinds of perks available to bankers or MPs).

Dr Williams returned to the theme in his Christmas Day sermon in Canterbury Cathedral, in which he said society would stick together in hard financial times only if people felt the burden was being shared.

‘That confidence isn’t in huge supply, given the crises of trust that have shaken us in the past couple of years and the sense that the most prosperous have yet to shoulder their load.’

It’s hard not to come to the conclusion that what really irks Rowan Williams is the fact that the government is not redistributing wealth more vigorously. Unfortunately at Christmas, just as at any other time, if a person cannot be content with what he has, he won’t be content no matter how many free Xboxes are showered upon him. It’s a shame that rather than point that out, Rowan chose to preach leftist politics instead. He also could have said a few words about the relatively significant Incarnation event.