As Christmas draws closer, the spiritual head of the Anglican Communion, Dr Rowan Williams gave a message on the meaning of Christmas as he spoke in a ceremony in South London’s Waterloo for Lambeth Council.

|TOP|The Archbishop of Canterbury said, “Christmas is the Christian’s Christmas present to everybody else. Christmas, for a Christian, tells us why people matter.”

Lambeth Council has been at the centre of a row erupting across many regions in the UK, as more and more authorities feel pressured not to expose any religious elements of Christmas, due to fears that it will offend other ethnic minorities.

Lambeth Council members last month even stated that the Christmas lights would no longer be called Christmas lights, but “winter lights” and “celebrity lights”. However, this was quickly reversed after Christian councillors and press caught on to the story.

To win back extreme critics, the council chose one of its most prominent Christian celebrities to turn on the “Christmas lights” – actor Kevin Spacey.

|AD|Standing alongside Spacey, Dr Williams addressed the crowds saying, “You’ve probably noticed that there has been quite a lot of fuss in the papers about Lambeth and Christmas. If you haven’t, I don’t know which papers you’ve been reading, but here is what I want to say about that.”

He said Christmas was a Christian community’s gift to the world, and was a symbol of why people mattered.

Dr Williams said, “They matter because God took us seriously — seriously enough to get involved with our lives, to suffer with us and change things. That is what I believe. That is what Christians believe and Christmas exists because of that belief.

“You may or may not believe that. You may think people matter for other reasons, but never mind. That is what we are saying and that is our present. That is our gift to the rest of the world.”

Dr Williams also used his address to bring greater attention to the thousands of homeless lives under threat in Pakistan as winter draws in.

After returning from the country just last week, Dr Williams said, “As winter draws on we are all very, very conscious of what is happening over there. We are conscious of the danger to children, to old people, actually to nearly everybody there because of the cold and the likelihood of more deaths. Again, we are remembering [that] people matter over there.”

Concluding the address, Dr Williams said, “I am glad to be here and to wish you all the very best, and the most blessed Christmas you could possibly have, because you matter too.”