A Nativity scene and Christmas tree at Luminaria at Thanksgiving Level in Lehi on Saturday, Dec. 16, 2017. Spenser Heaps, Deseret Information
C. S. Lewis, creator of “Stunned by Pleasure,” printed by Harcourt Brace. Undated picture by Walter Steneman. Related Press
Editor’s observe: This story initially printed Dec. 25, 2019.
The Christian apologist C.S. Lewis had a contact of Ebenezer Scrooge in him when it got here to Christmas.
“As soon as in our world, a Secure had one thing in it that was greater than our complete world.” — “The Final Battle”
In an essay first printed in 1957, he known as the spiritual competition “vital and compulsory,” however groused concerning the gift-giving and card-sending, which he dismissed as a “business racket.”
“... The concept that not solely all pals however even all acquaintances ought to give each other presents, or a minimum of ship each other playing cards, is kind of fashionable and has been compelled upon us by the shopkeepers,” Lewis wrote in “What Christmas Means to Me.”
With attribute humor, Lewis went on to say that by the point Dec. 25 arrives, households are in no temper for making merry, however as an alternative “look much more as if there had been an extended sickness in the home.”
C. S. Lewis, creator of “Stunned by Pleasure,” printed by Harcourt Brace. Undated picture by Walter Steneman.
Related Press
To separate his emotions concerning the religious facet and the business facet of the season, in 1954, Lewis wrote an essay known as “Xmas and Christmas: A Misplaced Chapter from Herodotus,” through which he created a fictional land known as Niatirb (Britain spelled backwards) that celebrates two festivals. Exmas is a competition of excesses, with contributors frantically exchanging playing cards and presents, typically reluctantly. The opposite, Crissmas is a a lot easier, quieter celebration centered on the beginning of a kid.
“I ship no playing cards and provides no presents besides to youngsters.” — C.S. Lewis in private correspondence
He disputed the idea that the 2 festivals are the identical just because they're celebrated on the identical day. “The photographs that are stamped on the Exmas-cards don't have anything to do with the sacred story which the clergymen inform about Crissmas,” he wrote.
Whereas the beloved creator of “Mere Christianity” and “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” disliked the frenzy and spending of the vacation season, he known as the beginning of Jesus Christ “the central occasion within the historical past of Earth’’ and deemed the Incarnation “the Grand Miracle.”
He even wrote poems about Christmas, “The Nativity” and “The Flip of the Tide.”
Listed here are 18 issues C.S. Lewis stated or wrote about Christmas, starting from reverent to inspiring to humorous:
As soon as in our world, a Secure had one thing in it that was greater than our complete world. — The Final Battle
The Son of God grew to become a person to allow males to turn out to be sons of God. — Mere Christianity
Can it actually be my obligation to purchase and obtain lots of junk each winter simply to assist the shopkeepers? — What Christmas Means to Me
The beginning of Christ is the central occasion within the historical past of earth — the very factor the entire story has been about. — Interview
Within the Christian story, God descends to reascend. He comes down; down from the heights of absolute being into time and house, down into humanity; down additional nonetheless, if embryologists are proper, to recapitulate within the womb historic and pre-human phases of life; right down to the very roots and seabed of the Nature. — Miracles
I ship no playing cards and provides no presents besides to youngsters. — Private correspondence
The Everlasting Being, who is aware of every thing and who created the entire universe, grew to become not solely a person however (earlier than that) a child, and earlier than that a foetus inside a lady’s physique. If you wish to get the cling of it, suppose the way you wish to turn out to be a slug or a crab. — Mere Christianity
Who has not heard the wail of despair, and certainly of resentment, when, on the final second, simply as everybody hoped that the nuisance was over for yet one more yr, the undesirable reward from Mrs. Busy (whom we hardly bear in mind) flops unwelcomed via the letterbox, and again to the dreadful outlets one in all us has to go. — What Christmas Means to Me
God may, had He happy, have been incarnate in a person of iron nerves, the Stoic kind who lets no sigh escape Him. Of His nice humility He selected to be incarnate in a person of delicate sensibilities who wept on the grave of Lazarus and sweated blood in Gethsemane. — Private correspondence
A number of the footage of Father Christmas in our world make him look solely humorous and jolly. However now that the youngsters truly stood him, they didn’t discover it fairly like that. He was so large, and so glad, and so actual, that all of them grew to become fairly nonetheless. They felt very glad, but additionally solemn. — The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Only a hurried line ... to inform a narrative which places the distinction between our Feast of the Nativity and all this ghastly ‘Xmas’ racket at its lowest. My brother heard a lady on a bus say, because the bus handed a church with a crib exterior it ... ‘They carry faith into every thing. Look, they’re dragging it even into Christmas now’. — Private correspondence
Among the many sheep (I like a sheep have strayed)/ I watch the manger the place my Lord is laid; On that my baaing nature would win thence/ Some woolly innocence! — The Nativity
Is it nonetheless doable amid this ghastly racket of ‘Xmas’ to trade greetings for the Feast of the Nativity? If that's the case, mine, very heat, to each of you. — Private correspondence
Then he cried out ‘Merry Christmas! Lengthy reside the true King!’ and he and the reindeer had been gone from sight earlier than anybody realized he had began. — The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
So Loss of life lay in arrest. However at Bethlehem the bless’d/Nothing higher may very well be heard/Than sighing wind within the thorn, the cry of One new-born/And cattle in secure as they stirred. — The Flip of the Tide
It was stunning on two or three successive nights concerning the Holy Time, to see Venus and Jove (Jupiter) blazing at each other, as soon as with the Moon proper between them: Majesty and Love linked by Virginity — what may very well be extra applicable? — Private correspondence
We discover in our Prayer Guide that Psalm 110 is a kind of appointed for Christmas Day. We could at first be shocked by this. There's nothing in it about peace and goodwill, nothing remotely suggestive of the secure at Bethlehem. ... The observe will not be ‘Peace and goodwill’ however ‘Beware. He’s coming’. — Reflections on the Psalms
The central miracle asserted by Christians is the Incarnation. They are saying that God grew to become Man. Each different miracle prepares for this, or reveals this, or outcomes from this. — Miracles