Paper Monitor
12:18 UK time, Thursday, 20 December 2007
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
Now there's a sight to warm the cockles of even the sharpest elbowed commuter – a picture of In the Night Garden's interloping insomniac on the front of the Times.
After all, he… she… it – in its best-selling guise of Blanket Time Iggle Piggle - is top of Paper Monitor's wish list to Santa this Christmas.
But is Santa about to renege on his side of the bargain? Paper Monitor only asks because in a surreptitious way the Times seems to be raising the question of Santa's existence. There it is reporting on yesterday's comments by the Archbishop of Canterbury (reacting to a question from Ricky Gervais - don't ask) about the veracity of the nativity story, when suddenly religion correspondent Ruth Gledhill ups the stakes by throwing in a line about the metaphysics of Mr Claus.
"[H]e denied that believing in God was equivalent to believing in Santa Claus or the tooth fairy."
Now wait a minute. Rowan Williams is entitled to think what he likes about matters of the Almighty but when he starts veering into questions of a very delicate nature for young ears… shouldn't the Times be more tempered in its approach?
Staying with the Thunderer, the debate (and woefully overlooked by most of the press) that athiest in chief Prof Richard Dawkins likes belting out Christmas Carols, thunders on. Columnist Libby Purves picked up on it a few days ago and today David Aaronovitch helpfully gives us the Jewish take on whether or not one should pitch in with the rest of the choir.
It seems Mr Aaronovitch is every bit the East End reveller when it comes to taking his place alongside the old Joanna, regardless of the fact that he doesn't believe a word of what he's chirruping. So should he too stick to more secular songs such as Frosty the Snowman, as Ms Purves suggests? Why that would be every bit as hypocritical - after all, Frosty is also a tale of resurrection, he counters.
What next - Iggle Piggle was the real Archangel Gabriel?
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