Indeed, It is a Narnia Christmas

Today, I considered whether I should write, “Merry Christmas” at the end of an email I wrote to a client. Christmas is the day after tomorrow. (It doesn’t feel that way. There is something in me that thinks that, for such a significant celebration, we should leave work, as we left school, a week ahead of time) The Christian association of the holiday is becoming increasingly offensive in our pluralistic society. Google’s ecumenical happy holiday pictures are cute, but lacking of any depth because they fail to celebrate the spiritual significance Christians remember shortly after the darkest night of the year: light stepped into darkness. I did not know if the client was a Christian. I had not met him in person. From a business perspective, it was more important that I retain his good graces rather than remind him that the people in darkness had seen a great light. I supposed we don’t like to be reminded that we are in darkness. In any case, like Google, I kept it professional and shallow, wishing him a good holiday as I signed off.

In a New York Times op-ed, Lauren Miller’s antidote is to honestly celebrate what perhaps motivates most Americans to celebrate Christmas, “a collection of everything yearned for: warmth, plenty, peace, family, conviviality.” She points out how most everything in the Christmas tradition is a hodgepodge of Christian tradition, pagan mythology, and Victorian fantasy, and these fantasies should not be a bad thing. They leave the holiday doors open to those who, like her, are not Christians.

Her example in all of this is none other than C.S. Lewis. Miller authored The Magicians Book: A Skeptic’s Adventures in Narnia, which I am now interested in reading. Miller is not a Christian, as I mentioned earlier, but she celebrates Lewis’ fantasies as she celebrates Christmas, and writes about her yearly ritual of re-reading The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, with its snowy forests, appearance of Father Christmas and the restoration of a land, which is “always winter and never Christmas.” To the annoyance of some of his friends, include J.R.R. Tolkien, Lewis’ Narnia series mixes myths as much as Christmas does. Sure, there is Christian imagery in Narnia, but there is also pagan creatures liberally borrowed from, among others, Greek, German, Druid and Nordic myths. He pulls good things from all of them, ties them together with love, and creates a beautiful story. Why not do the same for Christmas?

For some of those same reasons, she points out, some conservative Christians, such as the Puritans in Colonial Boston, banned Christmas all together. (I went to a Christmas party at Reformed Theological Seminary, who are the theological kin of the Puritans. I am happy to report that there were festivities and feasting. Even the lecture on “Christmas according to Ecclesiastes” was uplifting. There was no beer, but progress has clearly been made). Given the rocky relationship between Christianity and Christmas, why should modern Christians attempt to make Christ the centerpiece of the Christmas season, much less have the audacity to invite others to do the same?

We are blessed to live in a free society, and the mythological hodgepodge is inevitable. Amongst the shopping, the stress, the decorations, the parties and the presents, a majority of Americans are probably merely seeking a few days off to be with loved ones. As human beings, we have every freedom to be post-modern and make Christmas what we want it to be with the help of a choice buffet of fantasy. But if this is where the holidays end, then I find this decisively unsatisfying, and, I argue, C.S. Lewis would, too.

A central theme to all of Lewis’ work is that the best parts of myths point to something, or rather, someone. (For that matter, he argued that much of nature, in death and resurrection, points there as well) Miller argues that “what binds all the elements of Lewis’ fantasy together is something more like love.” True, but as John points out, God is love. Aslan is central to the story because he represents love incarnate. In Lewis’ world, not to mention his life, fantasy was never meant to be a vague affirmation of whatever we want to believe. These are sign posts to something greater. One can hear the resurrected Aslan’s voice proclaim, “There is more magic.”

In an interview in Rolling Stone a few years back, the reporter asked Bono why he was a Christian. To paraphrase, he said that he could not get over the idea that God himself would enter the world as a human to rescue humanity. It’s for good reason that we (in the Northern hemisphere, in any case) celebrate Christmas a few days after the longest night of the year. We were in darkness. A quick examination of any life, much less the pages of any newspaper, would reveal that sin has infected us with darkness, and we cannot cure ourselves. Rather than leave us that way, God sent his Son to enter the world as a human some 2000 years ago. He both taught and demonstrated the life abundant. Then he faced God’s wrath in our place, and he overcame death in his resurrection. Lewis called the incarnation, God’s Son becoming a human baby, the Grand Miracle. This is what we celebrate at Christmas. This is not something like love, this is love, in the flesh, in the arms of a virgin, adored by shepherds.

This Christmas, if you yearn for warmth, plenty, peace, family and conviviality, I sincerely hope you receive it. I hope our fantasies of Father Christmas, evergreens and cinnamon cookies help you on your way. Deeper still, I hope you can go beyond these signposts. I hope you can follow the shepherds to Bethlehem of old, where the Son of God, love incarnate, lay in feeding trough. I hope the thought of God stepping into the world makes you want to follow him. Otherwise, I fear that you will sit in the dark winter, surrounded by red and green decorations, always holiday, but never Christmas.