The singing of Christmas carols has become another battleground in the culture wars, and a battleground in which poetry has been sacrificed for the sake of pre-formed political positions.

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Standing in a well-known cathedral last night, singing my way through the fifth Christmas Carol Service of Advent, I fell to thinking about the words of the carols we were singing (or, at least, that I was singing. I was surrounded by a large group of people ostentatiously not participating in what was going on). Why do we sing these words? And why is there, every Christmas, a row about the words we do or don’t sing at Christmas.

The row is a manifestation of the “culture wars” that continually range over the body of western civilisation: the two competing visions of what constitutes western civilisation bring out their heavy guns at this time of year, for the exact opposite of the Christmas Truce. Christmas carols are the continuation of this warfare by other means, and the way we show the side we take is by singing, or not singing, the carols of Christmas.

So we sing, or don’t sing, “O Little Town of Bethlehem”. We don’t sing it, ostentatiously, because we believe the little town of Bethlehem can’t possibly be peaceful, living as it does with the effects of the intifada and the Israeli blockade against its inhabitants. We sing it, fervently, because not to sing it is anti-semitic and prejudiced against Israel, the only western democracy in the middle east.

We sing, or don’t sing, “Once in Royal David’s City”. We don’t sing it, ostentatiously, because we object to Mrs Alexander’s sociology (wasn’t she the woman who wrote “All things bright and beautiful” with its disgusting lines about rich men in castles and poor men in gates?): how dare we use a Christmas carol to brainwash our children into thinking they should be “mild and obedient” (because, of course, mildness and obedience are no longer virtues in our world). We sing it, fervently, because we support Mrs Alexander’s sociology, thinking that the world has gone to hell in a handbasket since children started calling adults by their Christian names, and the whole point of Christmas is to teach children manners.

A (Christmas) pox on both these positions, for both of them believe that Christmas is an opportunity to further a political agenda which is arrived at by a process entirely separate from the festival of the Nativity of Christ. To believe that a Christmas Carol should reflect a point by point political agenda is to forget that Christmas Carols are poems, not manifestoes. “O Little Town of Bethlehem”, despite being written in the present tense, is not referring to a conurbation outside Jerusalem with a post code. It is in the historic present tense, referring to an event that happened long ago, but whose implications are still being worked out. Those implications will certainly have an influence on your attitude to the present day government of the town, but it is know-nothingness of the highest order to think that because Bethlehem was still and peaceful in the imagination of the poet then we are ignoring the troubles which have defaced it ever since that deep and dreamless night.

Christmas carols do not begin in politics. They begin in poetry, a human response to an encounter with the divine, the “everlasting light”. They begin in poetry, move on through personal change (“cast out our sin and enter in / be born in us today”) and then out into the world, the whole God’s creation (“with the poor, the scorned, the lowly, / lived on earth our Saviour holy”).

So be careful what carols you sing this Christmas, and be prepared for the singing of the carols to take the politics and prejudices, the hopes and fears, with which you came to the service, and to be transformed by the great glad tidings of God-with-us.