Christmas as religion : rethinking Santa, the secular and the sacred / Christopher Deacy.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Deacy, Christopher, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Christmas--History.

Christmas.

History.

Religion and culture.

Physical Description:

xi, 223 pages ; 23 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Oxford ; New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2016.

Summary:

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.

Contents:

1 What is Christmas? 17

2 Revisiting the Religious Origins and Essence of Christmas 33

3 Is Christmas a 'Secular' Religion? 73

4 Christmas as a Site of Implicit Religion 125

5 Christmas Films and the Persistence of the Supernatural 147

6 Reframing Christmas and the Religion of Materialism 169.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780198754565

0198754566

OCLC:

929590883

Publisher Number:

99969662164