LONDON — Christ must be put back into Christmas, and Britain needs to return to her Christian roots and values if the country is to survive.
This was the overriding message of a four-hour carol service on Saturday afternoon in the heart of London, just yards from Downing Street and close to Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament.
An estimated 1,000 people of a variety of ages, ethnicities and backgrounds — most of them born-again or nondenominational Christians — took part in the service led by Christian musicians and Protestant pastors who gave rousing speeches calling on the nation to honor her Christian heritage and proclaim, “Christ is King.”
But the “Putting Christ Back Into Christmas” carol service, the idea of British activist Tommy Robinson who is often vilified by the mainstream media as a “far-right” soccer hooligan, was strongly opposed by some groups before it had taken place.
The reason for their opposition was primarily put down to Robinson, who also leads the nationalist “Unite the Kingdom” campaign. The movement, which has held a series of well-attended rallies in recent months, has drawn widespread support among British citizens concerned about well-publicized problems in the country, notably uncontrolled immigration, which it considers an “invasion,” increasing curtailments of free speech, and the rise of Islam. A September rally in London drew around 3 million people, according to the campaign; the police put the figure significantly lower.
At the same time, “race hate crime” and offenses against immigrants have also been reported, increasing 2% this year compared to the previous year, but the numbers remain relatively small in the context of all crime (138,000 cases in England and Wales out of 9.4 million crimes).
The Church of England, which has largely favored an open-door immigration policy for many years, has been especially vocal in its opposition to Robinson’s group. Some of its senior figures, including former archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, criticized the carol service beforehand, saying Robinson was using carols, crosses and slogans such as “Christ is King” to promote a nationalist, anti‑migrant message, which, they argued, distorts the Christian Gospel of welcoming the stranger with compassion.
Anglican leaders also accused Robinson, and those supporting the “Unite the Kingdom” campaign, of fomenting a rise in “Christian nationalism.” Christmas, they said, should not be “weaponized” in a culture war by “far-right” activists, and they held a counterprotest outside St. Paul’s Cathedral, placing the Holy Family in an inflatable dinghy with banners saying, “Jesus was a refugee.”
Catholic bishops were silent about the Unite the Kingdom carol service, but Cardinal Vincent Nichols of Westminster had already added his voice to criticisms of the movement after its major rally in September. He accused the group of “co‑opting Christianity” to support what he said were attitudes hostile to migrants and contrary to the Gospel.
Christ-Focused
The carol service itself passed peacefully, with no anti-migrant rhetoric but rather a focus on placing Christ and salvation at the center of Christmas. The crowd joined in the carols such as O Come All Ye Faithful, Silent Night, and modern Christmas anthems. Speaker after speaker, including two Black singers and a Pakistani born-again Christian, took to the stage to share their testimonies of how Christ had saved them from sin, including from suicide, drugs and the occult.
“We’re here to celebrate Jesus’ birthday,” David Rhodes, a friend of Robinson, told the Register, adding that the organizers hoped the carol service “would remind people that we’re a Christian country, because not everybody appreciates that the civil society we enjoy has been built on Christian values, on biblical values, and if you don’t appreciate that, then you’re very much more likely to lose that foundation.”
Rhodes, who is policy director of Advance UK, a new political party that he said is alone in having “Christianity at its core,” added that the organizers hoped the carol service would help bring people back to church and come to know the true meaning of Christmas — in spite of the Church of England, which he said had “lost the plot” and whose comments he called “deplorable.”
Robinson, who since 2005 has been jailed several times, including for assault, mortgage fraud, and in October 2024 for contempt of court for repeating false claims against a Syrian refugee, is reported to have had a conversion to Christianity during his most recent jail term, when he was visited regularly by a Protestant pastor.
Speaking to the crowd at the end of the service, he described how, in 2009, when they started their campaign and issued “a cry for help at what was happening in our towns and cities,” church leaders “stood and opposed us.” He said that drove him away from Christianity. “In fact, I hated the church for betraying us,” said Robinson, a nom de guerre for his real name, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon. “We, all of us, were their lost sheep. The way they’ve acted this week is the reason that churches are empty.”
Robinson said that after reading the Bible in prison he “understood that Jesus would have stood against the establishment; he would have stood with the sinner.” Echoing the words of Zacchaeus the tax collector, he added that he found it “hard to say I’m a Christian because I know I live a life of sin, but then I realized that Jesus stood with the sinners.”
Openly admitting that he struggles with belief, he said that “moments like this bring me closer to faith,” adding that he had found the carol service “absolutely beautiful.” He also said he “felt something happening” that afternoon that he had also noticed at the Unite the Kingdom rallies, namely that had seen “the cross start becoming prevalent; I saw Jesus as King.”
Before the carol service began, Robinson, Rhodes and other speakers could be seen backstage with their heads bowed and praying. “We were praying for Tommy,” Rhodes told the Register afterwards, “and praying that the people who speak today will be filled with the Holy Spirit, that they’ll be filled with God’s words, not their own words, so that anybody here who is wondering about life, and wondering what Jesus’ birth and death and resurrection means, that they’ll find truth, they’ll find peace, and they’ll be able to live life abundantly, which is what God wants for us.”
Sampling opinion from the crowd, it was clear that those attending had very similar views. Kerpa, who was from London, told the Register that she vividly remembered watching a BBC documentary many years ago in which a Polish woman said she had chosen to live in Britain because it was a Christian country, but that when she arrived, she realized that “Britain had lost their God.”
She said that when one looks back at the history of the country, it is clear that “the greatest days of our country were when we actually focused on our Christian values.” Those churches that seek popularity with the world have compromised on biblical truth so that “when people go to church, they don’t find truth,” she added.
A number of those present seemed to have lost trust in institutional Christianity, whether Anglican or Catholic, and at least two who spoke to the Register were former Catholics who had turned to evangelical Christianity. Some saw the event as filling a vacuum left by a Catholic Church, they said, that, instead of boldly proclaiming the one true faith, is either silent or holds similar views to the Church of England when it comes to migration and multiculturalism.
Steve from Swindon blamed the country’s situation on “suppressing Jesus for multiculturalism,” adding that Britain is a Christian nation and that he saw Unite the Kingdom as a way to “return to our Christian values.” He said he was also taken aback listening on the radio to the Church of England’s opposition to the service. “I thought: ‘You are complicit in the multiculturalism. How dare you? You are the problem. You are the establishment. You’ve got us to where we are.’”
But he was disappointed by the crowd numbers that afternoon, saying, “If this is the way and this is the start, we’re a long way back from where I thought we’d be, and it’s going to be a long and slow journey.”
Media Misrepresentation?
Among the criticisms leveled at Robinson and the Unite the Kingdom campaign is that it is racist in its anti-unlimited-immigration stance and that some of its participants have used racial slurs and shouted abuse at rallies. But there was no evidence of this at the carol service, where people of all races took part on stage and in the crowd.
Sharon, a Londoner of Asian descent who was handing out leaflets urging people to return to Jesus in their hearts rather than “cultural Christianity,” said thinking that people in the Unite the Kingdom campaign “are racist or white nationalists or something” shows “a very wrong understanding about the movement.”
“People are not like that,” she told the Register, adding that she took part in the September rally on her own and that “the love that I got from people — and I’m Asian — was amazing.” She blamed the perception on the media, which, she said, “is making people afraid of nothing.”
Commenting on the carol service in Conservative Woman, former Church of England vicar and now Catholic commentator Gavin Ashenden criticized Anglican and other Christian leaders for adopting a “therapeutic,” inclusion‑obsessed, quasi‑Marxist theology that gravely distorts the Holy Family as a symbol to promote mass immigration.
In Dec. 15 comments to the Register, he said that although he could not attend the service himself, he saw “this small and humble event” as restoring “the real spirit of Christmas to people who want their love of God shorn of others’ political agendas.”
Like those who were present at the carol service, he was especially touched by the simplicity of comments, free from any political ideology, of a 10-year-old girl at the end of the service.
“God is watching, very, very proud of us as all stand here today,” the girl told the crowd. “Wherever you are, pray to God, and he will come to you, and he will enter your life, and he will save your life. Amen.”
