The oddities of the state church and the sporatic attenders

There's always something odd going on around Christmas-time. You get folks like Richard Dawkins singing Christmas carols. Now in Germany you get the debate over who should be able to get in the building for Christmas services. Admittedly in Germany, the churches appear to be funded through state taxation, which changes things a bit, but the whole plan below seems rather crazy:

With churches expected to be packed this Christmas Eve, German officials are calling for pews to be reserved for church members to ensure they are not squeezed out by holiday-only parishioners. Politicians from the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the liberal Free Democrats (FDP) told Tuesday's daily Bild newspaper it was unfair if regular attendants of church services couldn't find a seat at Christmas. "I support making services on December 24 open only to those who pay their church tax," a member of the CDU board in the south-western state of Baden-Württemberg, Thomas Volk, told the mass-market daily. Germans pay church tax along with their income tax unless they opt out.

The head of the FDP's parliamentary group in Berlin, Martin Lindner, said it was intolerable that in the past, active members of church congregations - often the elderly - had been forced to stand through the Christmas service because the pews were full. "Church tax payers should not be kept outside during such important services," he said. "Church members should be given tickets, for example, to give them priority seating."

- In The Local

(Of course, to show up in church but only on Christmas and Easter only also seems a little bit odd).