For most of us, Christmas is a holiday: a time to celebrate the end of the year among family and friends and take a well-earned rest. Inevitably, with the steady fall in the number of Australians who profess to be Christians, the secular aspects of Christmas are to the fore, and observance of the religious character of the day wanes.

The 2021 census reported that, for the first time, fewer than half of Australians identify as Christians (43.9 per cent). By far the largest Christian denomination is Catholicism (20 per cent of all Australians) followed by Anglicanism (9.8 per cent). The decline in the Christian proportion of our population has been fairly sharp: only a decade earlier, the 2011 census reported that 61.1 per cent of us called ourselves Christians.

Catholics account for one in five Australians - and they are on the receiving end of considerable religious bigotry.Credit:Tanya Lake

Nevertheless, while there are more non-believers than ever before (38.9 per cent), we are still predominantly a religious people. Almost two-thirds of us profess a religion, although the greater diversity of our population has naturally led to a greater diversity of faiths.

Still, more Australians identify as Christians than any other category. So it is worth remembering that for those who profess the Christian faith (however lightly), Christmas is also a day of religious significance; it is the day we mark and celebrate the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem 2000 years ago. This weekend, hundreds of thousands of Australians who seldom darken the door of a church will have made an exception to attend a Christmas service.

Even the most determined atheist must acknowledge that the modern Christmas, with its accompanying customs and iconography, evolved from the traditions of the Christian church.

Both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the UN Declaration on Civil and Political Rights recognise the right to profess and live in accordance with the precepts of one’s religious faith as a fundamental human right. Because religious belief, like race, cultural heritage, gender and sexuality, is intrinsic to a person’s identity, it is regarded, in the language of human rights lawyers, as a “protected characteristic” – that is, something to be protected and respected.

I have always thought that mocking a person because of their religion is something that only a truly ignorant person would do: just as only ignorant people would mock someone because of their race, culture or sexuality. Pauline Hanson using the burqa in the Senate to parody Muslims, and the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence who mock Catholic nuns in the Sydney Mardi Gras parade, were exhibiting precisely the same type of bigotry.

Of course, people have a right to engage in satire, whether to make a political point as Hanson did, or to display their dislike of a religious order, like the Mardi Gras marchers. But it is particularly important, in a pluralistic and multicultural society, that people treat one another’s differences with respect; that applies as much to religious belief as to any other characteristic intrinsic to identity.