When exactly is Christmas in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe?

I promised an article on the Harrowing of Hell in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe but it’s not a very Christmassy topic so I’m going to postpone it until the new year and finish 2023 instead with this question: when exactly is Christmas in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe?

It’s an important question because “always winter and never Christmas” is a constant refrain throughout the first part of the book. However, the moment of Christmas’s arrival is not entirely clear, not least because Christ does not appear directly in the book and Aslan is never seen as a cub. What we have instead is Father Christmas. So an obvious question we need to ask is why do we see Father Christmas rather than Christ? Or, if you like, why do we see Father Christmas rather than Aslan himself?

The answer, I think, is that it is important for Lewis that Aslan should remain hidden. Just as Christ was born in a manger in Bethlehem rather than in a palace in Rome, so too Aslan appears secretly, his arrival being heralded by Father Christmas but his actual return to Narnia being hidden in the narrative.

We can take this idea further. The collect for Christmas Day reminds us that God “has made this most holy night shine forth with the splendour of the true Light”. In this way, Christmas anticipates the “truly blessed night” of Easter “which alone deserved to know the time and hour when Christ rose again from the tomb!” As Lewis knew full well, these two fundamental events took place out of sight from the world. The Incarnation and the Resurrection could have taken place in the full glare of publicity but they didn’t. And they didn’t for a reason.

To quote Lewis’s master, George MacDonald, once again:

God ministers to us so gently, so stolenly, as it were, with such a quiet, tender, loving absence of display, that men often drink of his wine, as these wedding guests drank, without knowing whence it comes-without thinking that the giver is beside them, yea, in their very hearts. For God will not compel the adoration of men: it would be but a pagan worship that would bring to his altars. He will rouse in men a sense of need, which shall grow at length into a longing; he will make them feel after him, until by their search becoming able to behold him, he may at length reveal to them the glory of their Father.

And what better way to convey this hiddenness - what Lewis called the kappa element in romance - than through children’s literature?

A third point to consider before I return to my original question is raised by Eleanor Parker in her wonderful book, Winters in the World: A journey through the Anglo-Saxon year. Parker points out that:

In Old English, the name Cristemæsse, ‘Christmas,’ appears in the recorded sources surprisingly late, not until the first decades of the eleventh century - at least four centuries after the festival began to be celebrated in Anglo-Saxon England.

The more commonly used word was middewinter, ‘Midwinter,’ or middewintres mæsse dæg, ‘Midwinter’s mass-day.’ For the English, Christmas falls well and truly in the middle of winter, at or about the time of the winter solstice. This seems very obvious to us but it’s not obvious in Narnia where winter ends as soon as Christmas arrives: the snow begins to melt and spring flowers bloom.

By writing in this way, Lewis was able to move swiftly from Christmas onto the sacrifice of Aslan and his subsequent Resurrection. What happens over the course of 33 years in our world takes place over the course of a few hours in Narnia.

So, Lewis was doing all sorts of interesting things when he wrote about Christmas in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Nonetheless, the answer to my initial question is ultimately quite simple, though we have to answer one final question before we can get there. The key is Father Christmas and our understanding of his role. To put it simply, we need to know whether he represents St Nicholas (Santa Claus) or not. Does he arrive on 25th or 6th December?

The answer, you may be relieved to hear after my earlier digressions, is straightforward. In a letter to a young fan in 1953, Lewis explicitly linked the arrival of Christ with the arrival of Father Christmas. In other words, Christmas in Narnia comes when Santa’s sleigh arrives.

“I’ve come at last,” said he. “She has kept me out for a long time, but I have got in at last. Aslan is on the move. The Witch’s magic is weakening.

Merry Christmas, everyone!