Christmas is the time for traditional pleasures – food (lots of turkey and Christmas pud), drink, the exchange of gifts, carol singing, sharing a little spiteful nastiness about the Jewish State... Well, that one is a traditional pleasure for some.

A combination of the last two in an Anglican church recently has aroused criticism even from the Archbishop of Canterbury and his predecessor.

Leading members of Britain’s Jewish and Christian communities have condemned a prominent Anglican church for holding a service where traditional carols were rewritten to attack Israel.

The Rector of St James’s Piccadilly, the Rev Charles Hedley, said that he would think twice before allowing the service to take place in his church again after he received dozens of complaints.

You’d think the Rev Hedley would have noticed that there was something wrong with an anti-Israel carol service, wouldn’t you? The clergy keep reminding us that Christmas is not just about commercialism. It is supposed to be about love and good-will to all men – except Israelis, it seems.

Did he not realise that devoting a church service to the expression of poisonous hatred is not very, well, Christmassy? Neither is nastiness about Jews defending themselves from the attacks of their enemies appropriate in a season devoted to the birth of a Jewish baby.