a theological observation
Dec. 24th, 2014 02:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimac(from a comment)
C.S. Lewis divided Christmas into three parts: 1) "a religious festival, important and obligatory for Christians, but of no interest to anyone else"; 2) "a popular holiday ... I much approve of merry-making, but I see no reason why I should volunteer views as to how other people should spend their own money in their own leisure among their own friends"; 3) "the commercial racket ... merely one annual symptom of that lunatic condition in which everyone lives by persuading everyone else to buy things."
He also wrote a hilarious pastiche of Herodotus describing a country (obviously the modern UK) which celebrates two simultaneous holidays, Christmas and "Exmas", the former a quiet religious celebration observed only by a few, and the latter a vast lunacy that nobody enjoys but everyone considers obligatory. That the two are actually the same, the writer considers not credible.
C.S. Lewis divided Christmas into three parts: 1) "a religious festival, important and obligatory for Christians, but of no interest to anyone else"; 2) "a popular holiday ... I much approve of merry-making, but I see no reason why I should volunteer views as to how other people should spend their own money in their own leisure among their own friends"; 3) "the commercial racket ... merely one annual symptom of that lunatic condition in which everyone lives by persuading everyone else to buy things."
He also wrote a hilarious pastiche of Herodotus describing a country (obviously the modern UK) which celebrates two simultaneous holidays, Christmas and "Exmas", the former a quiet religious celebration observed only by a few, and the latter a vast lunacy that nobody enjoys but everyone considers obligatory. That the two are actually the same, the writer considers not credible.
