Christmas merriment to our merely Christian friends

My last public appearance for the Thomas More Centre in 2024 was a joyful one. It started with an invitation from Katrina Currell (from St Joseph’s Catholic Church, Timboon) to talk about the vision and the work of the Thomas More Centre with representatives from Christian churches in the southwestern Victorian town of Timboon.

It was wonderful to have the chance to explain the TMC project of personal and relationship formation in Australia before such a genuinely warm ecumenical group of friends. In the presentation I was moved to invoke the spirit of the Oxford Inklings – that merry and sometimes disputing group of academics, poets and writers of whom C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien were the most famous members.

That sense was reinforced while driving through the twisting verdant Curdies River valley with its dairy farms nestled within voluptuous folds, smoky green native forests and the odd artisanal distillery and cheesery – it occurred to me Timboon would be a welcome home for a breed of coastal antipodean hobbits.

The TMC founding saint, Thomas More, can for obvious historical reasons seem at first like something of a hindrance for an audience made up of Latin Catholics, Anglicans, Baptists and elders from the Uniting Church. However, that was not the case.

All the people conveyed their shared desire for something like C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity and the promotion of Christian virtues of faith, hope, prayer and charity.

C.S. Lewis celebrated the Christian clarity, humour-filled courage and good sense of St Thomas More, who is cited in his famous Screwtape Letters: “The devil … that proud spirit … cannot endure to be mocked.” As writer Joseph Pearce notes in his book, C.S. Lewis and the Catholic Church, Lewis also cites Martin Luther in much the same vein.

Lewis had waded through the literature of Tudor England in preparation for a book on that subject and was particularly struck by the tragic “common ground” in Christ upon which stood both Thomas More (1478-1535), the martyred Catholic statesman and saint, and William Tyndale (1494-1536), scholar and Protestant reformer who was also executed for his outspoken beliefs.

Both men were deeply opposed and yet both were Christian humanists, were dedicated to translation and deep reading of the scriptures and both opposed the attempts of Henry VIII to annul his marriage to Queen Catherine of Aragon.

Lewis does not make light of their different convictions and the sadness he experiences in being realistic about these. He writes to a pen-friend and Italian Catholic monk:

"All the writings of the one and all the writings of the other I have lately read right through. Both of them seem to me most saintly men and to have loved God with their whole heart: I am not worthy to undo the shoes of either of them.

Nevertheless they disagree and (what racks and astounds me) their disagreement seems to me to spring not from their vices nor from their ignorance but rather from their virtues and the depths of their faith, so that the more they were at their best the more they were at variance."

(Collected Letters II, 815; to Don Giovanni Calabria, 25 November 1947)

On Making Merry and Father Christmas

Despite Lewis’ struggle to reconcile this difference of Christian adherence in the 15th century, he and Tolkien shared the “mere” Christian celebration of the feast of the birth of Jesus Christ at Christmas.

They did this not only by venerating the astonishing truth of the biblical narrative in all its depth and luminosity, but also by enjoying the wonderful fusion of pagan symbology with Christian saintliness and cosmic mythology we find in the minor players in the Christian Feast.

None more so than in the two authors' depiction of Father “Nicholas” (as Tolkien calls him) Christmas. Tolkien does this brilliantly in his whimsical hand-illustrated Letters From Father Christmas (1976).

The book was edited by his daughter-in-law, the Winnipeg-born Baillie Tolkien, and it is a true showcase of Tolkien’s imagination and his gifts as an illustrator. It was gathered and published after her father-in-law’s death from private papers, surprisingly preserved.

Today’s editions consist of facsimiles of 25 years of letters, stamps and envelopes which Tolkien drew and wrote to his young children beginning in 1920. The letters follow Father Christmas’ adventures and mission in the North Pole as he prepares gifts for the children of the world. There are some deliciously funny adventures and moments involving the accident-prone North Polar Bear and his family and many others. It is an essential addition to the family Christmas library.

C.S. Lewis, on the other hand, places Father Christmas green-clad and mysterious into the pages of his first Narnia book, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

He appears to be a mixture of the Christian St Nicholas of Myra and the messenger of restoration, but not one who will save the children from the blood of sacrifice and war. Out of his sack he gives Peter a sword and shield, Susan arrows, a bow and horn and Lucy a dagger and a bottle of healing medicine.

This placement of one mythology into another annoyed his friend Tolkien. Lewis was attempting to capture something of the “green man” presence of restored creation and one which, in Lewis’ hands, honours “the true King”, the allegorical Aslan the lion – all consistent with a cosmic and Christian view of Christmas, even if jarring for the meticulous Tolkien.

In Narnia’s narrative, Father Christmas is a type of prophet of the overcoming of all the crabbed meanness and wickedness of the evil White Witch and her minions both fictional and historical – he is an armorer of hope in the battle against evil.

In her fascinating piece An Inklings Christmas, C.S. Lewis scholar Crystal Hurd writes:

"Lewis particularly wanted to restore the old traditional perspective of 'Father Christmas', the one in which a generous and jolly man encourages people to celebrate together the importance of Christ’s birth."

Along with the Inklings, we at TMC wish you a truly good, healing and jolly time with your family and friends (both believers and those the Bible calls those of “good will”) – a time beyond the panic of unrealistic demand and consumerism and a deep celebration of the mystery of the Christ Child’s birth.

Anna Krohn
Executive Director
Thomas More Centre