I am sorry to have to introduce the subject of Christmas in these articles. It is an indecent subject; a cruel, gluttonous subject; a drunken, disorderly subject; a wasteful, disastrous subject; a wicked, cadging, lying, filthy, blasphemous, and demoralizing subject. Christmas is forced on a reluctant and disgusted nation by the shopkeepers and the press; in its own merits it would wither and shrivel in the fiery breath of universal hatred; and anyone who looked back to it would be turned into a pillar of greasy sausages.

We must be gluttonous because it is Christmas. We must be insincerely generous; we must buy things that nobody wants, and give them to people we don’t like; we must go to absurd entertainments that make even our little children satirical.

As for me, I shall fly from it all tomorrow or next day to some remote spot miles from a shop, where nothing worse can befall me than a serenade from a few peasants, or some equally harmless survival of medieval mummery, shyly proferred, not advertised, moderate in its expectations, and soon over.

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Note: This ill tempered screed on Christmas can be found in an article published in the Saturday Review (1 January 1898), entitled "Peace and Goodwill to Managers." Shaw's dislike for the commercial and festive aspect of Christmas is well known. So it's not a surprise that he was not a religious man. Though he understood and respected that people had the right to believe in whatever they chose, he scorned at the arguments and conflicts religion could cause. Shaw also felt that people believed in God not through their own mind, but through a sense of duty and belonging as it was the done thing.