Christmas Profanation

Mundabor has an interesting post, Christmas Madness . It is well worth reading, and reminds me of something similar, as long ago as 1988.

On Christmas Eve, at the brokerage where I worked we all decided to go out for lunch at a restaurant somewhere in Knightsbridge. There were about ten of us.

We were eating when suddenly a uniformed policewoman came to our table, and demanded to know who owned car number ******, which she said was illegally parked outside. A friend said it was his, but was at home in Winchester.

She then stripped, singing some secular ditty as she did so: not a real policewoman, but a "stripogram", poor woman, and clearly a mother, because she had stretch-marks. 

The friend, an Anglican, and, incidentally, a former S.A.S colonel, and I immediately left, our lunch half-eaten.

The experience overshadowed Christmas. In any half-decent, half civilized country, such work as this poor woman did would be unnecessary and illegal.