LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY tofulope) The phoney war on Christmas

Luton council, we are told, has banned people from celebrating Christmas. Birmingham has renamed the season Winterval. A Reading man has been told to take his decorations down. There's only one problem with the 'PC campaign' against Christmas - it's pure nonsense. By Oliver Burkeman

Around this time of year, as the nights draw in and carol-singers don their hats and scarves, David Franks can count on receiving several enraged telephone calls and letters demanding to know why he has banned the people of Luton from celebrating Christmas. The exact circumstances in which the Liberal Democrat leader of Luton borough council came to outlaw centuries of Christian tradition are unclear, not least to David Franks, but the central facts are always the same. He and his fellow councillors have forcibly replaced Christmas with a "Harry Potter-themed" event called Luminos, to avoid offending minorities.

There's also a link to a podcast at the bottom of the article, which I haven't had chance to listen to but looks interesting