Gollum and the Spirit of Christmas, by Joseph Pearce
Christmas and Its Forgotten Message, by Donald DeMarco
December 27, 2023
Fr. Dwight Longenecker: The Coming Fiducia Fallout
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*Image: The Ghost of Christmas Present by John Leech, 1843 [from the first edition of A Christmas Carol published by Chapman & Hall, London]
By Joseph Pearce, EWTN News, December 26, 2023
A native of England, Joseph Pearce is Director of Book Publishing at the Augustine Institute, and editor of the St. Austin Review, editor of Faith & Culture, series editor of the Ignatius Critical Editions, senior instructor with Homeschool Connections, and senior contributor at the Imaginative Conservative.
The more we love characters like Scrooge and Gollum, the more we hate the sins that keep them in agony.
When we think of writers associated with Christmas, Dickens would no doubt come to mind, as, perhaps, would Chesterton. It is unlikely, however, that the name of J.R.R. Tolkien would spring to mind.
In Tolkien’s works, such as The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion, set in Middle-earth, there is no place for Christmas for the simple reason that these works are set in a mystical past, many years before the coming of Christ. Clearly, any mention of the birth of Christ and the festivities associated with it would be anomalous, and indeed absurd, in Tolkien’s mythical world, which is why Tolkien disapproved of his friend C. S. Lewis’s decision to place Father Christmas somewhat incongruously into the mythical world of Narnia. …..
This essay first appeared in the Imaginative Conservative and is republished with permission.
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