OK, more info from this article about the urban myth of Winterval 'replacing' Christmas:
Perhaps the most notorious of the anti-Christmas rebrandings is Winterval, in Birmingham, and when you telephone the Birmingham city council press office to ask about it, you are met first of all with a silence that might seasonably be described as frosty. "We get this every year," a press officer sighs, eventually. "It just depends how many rogue journalists you get in any given year. We tell them it's bollocks, but it doesn't seem to make much difference."
According to an official statement from the council, Winterval - which ran in 1997 and 1998, and never since - was a promotional campaign to drive business into Birmingham's newly regenerated town centre. It began in early November and finished in January. During the part of that period traditionally celebrated as Christmas, "there was a banner saying Merry Christmas across the front of the council house, Christmas lights, Christmas trees in the main civil squares, regular carol-singing sessions by school choirs, and the Lord Mayor sent a Christmas card with a traditional Christmas scene wishing everyone a Merry Christmas".
None of that, though, was enough to prevent a protest movement at the time, whose members included the then Bishop of Birmingham, Mark Santer, as well as two members of UB40. Sensing a never-to-be-repeated public-relations opportunity, tourism staff at Solihull council invited Birmingham residents in search of a traditional Christmas to travel there instead. And the leader of the anti-Winterval campaign, Ken White, fulfilled a key requirement of all such disputes: the people of Birmingham, he declared, were the victims of "political correctness gone mad".
So, some key facts:
- it was tried out in 1997 and 1998 then dropped
- it didn't replace Christmas but instead tried to feature Christmas as part of a larger branding exercise to bring in shoppers
- no ban of anything Christmas-related EVER formed part of this.
Now, please give it a rest...
And as for ELC being too politically correct, I'll believe that when all their toy washing machines, toy cookers etc are blue only instead of pink only.