Mark Pack

Here’s the email I’ve just sent to The Times. Let’s hope it doesn’t turn out I’m hallucinating and saw 175 mentions of Christmas where in fact there were none.

I’m really confused.

In your story “Christmas lights switch-on ceremony renamed ‘Winter White Night” (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/scotland/article6915007.ece) you report that, “Christmas will not be Christmas in Dundee this year. All references to the religious holiday have been dropped from the switching-on ceremony for the city’s festive lights.”

Yet when I go to look up information about the ceremony online, I find the program at http://www.dundee.com/winter-light-night.html where “Christmas” is mentioned no less than six times. “Christmas lights”, “Christmas fairy”, “Christmas shopping”, “Christmas carols”, “Christmas story telling” and “Christmas songs”.

There’s also the minor matter that “Christmas” gets no less than 50 mentions on the council’s web page listing events in November (http://www.dundeecity.gov.uk/events/month.php?monthyear=11,2009), followed by a further 119 in December (http://www.dundeecity.gov.uk/events/month.php?monthyear=12,2009).

That seems an awful lot of mentions of Christmas given your report that “Christmas will not be Christmas” and “All references … have been dropped”.

So as I said, I’m confused. Missing one obscure reference to Christmas I could understand. I’ve certainly made worse mistakes than that. But when the programme is littered with Christmas and the council’s website is too, what am I to make of your story?

Hat-tip: Liberal Conspiracy