Prisoners Allowed To Celebrate Pagan Holidays

What the Daily Mail believes Pagans get up to on the Eight Major Sabbats

News today that Pagan prisoners in the UK will be allowed to take four of the eight sabbats as days off work whilst they are in hokey – which four is not specified, although apparently prison governors will be provided with a list of the major pagan holidays for reference. This is part of a move in which, in the spirit of religious equality, convicts of different religions are allowed to cease breaking rocks in the hot sun on the holy days of their own religion.

Needless to say, this is not how it has been reported by Nazi propaganda rag The Daily Mail. In an unintentionally hilarious article entitled Pagan prisoners given time off to worship the Sun God the Mail has described (mostly inaccurately) what Pagans are supposed to get up to on these days (see diagram), as if this were some reason not to allow these prisoners this indulgence.

There are at least two points which seem to have escaped the Mail (there are of course many more, but I am focussing on the two most important). Firstly, they are only getting as much time off as prisoners of other religions except on different days. Secondly, the prisoners are only going to be let off work for the day so they can celebrate the pagan feast day privately in their cell – they are not being let out of prison or anything like that: so citing – even inaccurately – what pagans outside prisons allegedly get up to is completely irrelevant.