Christmas as Religion

Rethinking Santa, the Secular, and the Sacred

Christopher Deacy

Provides a new take on established literature on the relationship between Christmas and religion, including a revisiting of the way Durkheim and Eliade have understood the location of the sacred-profane interface
Argues that we need to move away from conventional binary language in order to develop a more sophisticated and realistic understanding of where religion can be encountered, and it draws on the category of Implicit Religion to achieve this reconceptualization
Offers critical discussion of the relationship between Jesus and Santa where it is argued that it is their separation from one another which, paradoxically, makes them complementary figures who exist independently yet without conflict as no one (including Christians) has to choose between them

Christmas as Religion

Rethinking Santa, the Secular, and the Sacred

Christopher Deacy

Description

In Christmas as Religion, Christopher Deacy explores the premise that religion plays an elementary role in our understanding of the Christmas festival, but takes issue with much of the existing literature which is inclined to limit the contours and parameters of 'religion' to particular representations and manifestations of institutional forms of Christianity. 'Religion' is often tacitly identified as having an ecclesiastical frame of reference, so that if the Church is not deemed to play a central role in the practice of Christmas for many people today then it can legitimately be side-lined and relegated to the periphery of any discussion relating to what Christmas 'means'. Deacy argues that such approaches fail to take adequate stock of the manifold ways in which people's beliefs and values take shape in modern society. For example, Christmas films or radio programmes may comprise a non-specifically Christian, but nonetheless religiously rich, repository of beliefs, values, sentiments and aspirations. Therefore, this book makes the case for laying to rest the secularization thesis, with its simplistic assumption that religion in Western society is undergoing a period of escalating and irrevocable erosion, and to see instead that the secular may itself be a repository of the religious. Rather than see Christmas as comprising alternative or analogous forms of religious expression, or dependent on any causal relationship to the Christian tradition, Deacy maintains that it is religious per se, and, moreover, it is its very secularity that makes Christmas such a compelling, and even transcendent, religious holiday.

Christmas as Religion

Rethinking Santa, the Secular, and the Sacred

Christopher Deacy

Christmas as Religion

Rethinking Santa, the Secular, and the Sacred

Christopher Deacy

Author Information

Christopher Deacy, Reader in Theology & Religious Studies, University of Kent

Dr Christopher Deacy is Reader in Theology & Religious Studies at the University of Kent. His publications include Screening the Afterlife: Theology, Eschatology, and Film (Routledge, 2012) and Theology and Film: Challenging the Sacred/Secular Divide (Wiley Blackwell, 2007).

Christmas as Religion

Rethinking Santa, the Secular, and the Sacred

Christopher Deacy

Reviews and Awards

"Deacy's book is abundantly topical and interesting-where it leaves questions unanswered, it lays a foundation for others to build upon. Christmas as Religion joins a growing body of scholarship on consumerism and other supposedly "secularized" cultural practices as religion by scholars such as Kathryn Lofton. Upper-level students may find Christmas as Religion an illuminating read to accompany a material example of Christmas as religion, such as one of the films or books Deacy analyzes." - Leslie Ribovich, The Religion Journal

"Deacy provides an innovative cultural study of Christmas." - Liam Sutherland, The Expository Times

"We are all familiar with the complaint that Christmas has been emptied of its religious meaning as a result of secularism and consumerism. Christopher Deacy challenges this popular misconception in a stimulating book that offers an important correction to the work of Steve Bruce and others" - Paul Richardson, Church of England Newspaper

"Christopher Deacy provides an innovative cultural study of Christmas as multi-faceted modern festival, at least as practiced in the west." - Liam Sutherland, Expository Times

Christmas as Religion

Rethinking Santa, the Secular, and the Sacred

Christopher Deacy

From Our Blog

Christmas on the radio

Back in 1944 the Archbishop of York, Cyril Garbett, wrote in the Radio Times that 'the wireless and the English tongue are means by which God's message of love and peace can spread through the world'. We may find it difficult these days to construe the BBC's output over Christmas as taking on such a missiological flavour, but certainly in its early days Lord Reith, saw religion as one of the four principal pillars.

Posted on December 23, 2016

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Why Christmas should matter to us whether we are 'religious' or not

There are many aspects of Christmas that, on reflection, make little sense. We are supposed to be secular-minded, rational and grown up in the way we apprehend the world around us. Richard Dawkins speaks for many when he draws a distinction between the 'truth' of scientific discourse and the 'falsehoods' perpetuated by religion which, as he tells us in The God Delusion, 'teaches us that it is a virtue to be satisfied with not understanding' (Dawkins 2006).

Posted on August 17, 2016

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