Bishop attacks 'nonsense' Christmas carol

The Bishop of Croydon has attacked some of the UK's favourite Christmas carols as "nonsense".The Rt Rev Nick Baines said hymns such as Away in a Manger had helped perpetuate an image of Christmas more to do with Victorian sentiment than the Gospel story.
"I always find it a slightly bizarre sight when I see parents and grandparents at a nativity play singing 'Away in a manger' as if it actually related to reality," he wrote in a book Why Wish You a Merry Christmas?
"I can understand the little children being quite taken with the sort of baby of whom it can be said 'no crying he makes', but how can any adult sing this without embarrassment?"
He added: "If we sing nonsense, is it any surprise that children grow into adults and throw out the tearless baby Jesus with Father Christmas and other fantasy figures?"
Other carols singled out by the bishop included Once in Royal David's City with its line "mild, obedient, good as He" - described by the Rt Rev Baines as sounding suspiciously like "Victorian behaviour control".
He also suggested Oh Come All Ye Faithful might more accurately be renamed Come All Ye Faithless.
It was not the "faithful" who went to see the baby Jesus but shepherds, he said, who are the "great unwashed" and the wise men, who were "pagans - men who were outside the covenant people of God".
The Rt Rev Baines attacked a perception of Christmas as something "tame, fantastic and anaemic".
He said: "All sorts of fantasies have grown up around Christmas and it has been sentimentalised into the sort of anaemic tameness that has made many people think of it as nothing more than some sort of a fairy story - which is nothing short of tragic, because nothing could be further from the truth."