Nativity chaos isn't so bad
This week brought us a new entrant on the stage of popular theological debate: Netmums alerted the nation to the imminent demise of the " traditional nativity play ". Mums are concerned, or in some cases, disappointed or even disgusted by their children's schools cavalier treatment of the Nativity, at a number of levels. Even those schools which haven't dispensed with it altogether, we learned, subvert the classic form by introducing a range of characters who can only be described as extra-biblical, including Elvis, Alan Sugar, spacemen, "a lobster", and, pushing the definition of "characters" to the limit, recycling bins. None of which is news to any long-serving parent, especially those of us who had more than one offspring and consequentially sat through a decade or more of school Christmas performances, grinning fixedly at the antics of the fairies, reindeer, and angels in the syncretistic nativity of modern Britain. Nor is it news to any pa