The Joyful Christian

(1977)
C.S. Lewis

Finished Reading: 09.2009

This collection of short readings is taken from the wide shelf whereon the written works of C.S. Lewis are found and is best read as a devotional. The short chapters are best digested slowly on a range of topics both spiritual and social. Over several months, I picked up The Joyful Christian between my other readings, and felt it was a good forum for a quick discussion in my heart. I have reproduced the section below which seemed to strike me as most important at the time encountered, though it is far from representative of the usual entries Lewis offers a thought on. More often are seen tidings on Morality, Prayer, Pride and Pain. The following reading is found on pages 203-205.

Christmas and Xmas

Christmas cards in general and the whole vast commercial drive called "Xmas" are one of my pet abominations; I wish they could die away and leave the Christian feast unentangled. Not of course that even secular festivities are, on their own level, an evil; but the labored and organized jollity of this - the spurious childlikeness - the half-hearted and sometimes rather profane attempts to keep up some superficial connection with the Nativity - are disgusting.

Three things go by the name of Christmas. One is a religious festival. This is important and obligatory for Christians; but as it can be of no interest to anyone else, I shall naturally say no more about it here. The second (it has complex historical connections with the first, but we needn't go into them) is a popular holiday, an occasion for merrymaking and hospitality. If it were my business to have a "view" on this, I should say that I much approve of merrymaking. But what I approve of much more is everybody minding his own business. 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. It is highly probable that they want my advice on such matters as little as I want theirs. But the third thing called Christmas is unfortunately everyones business.

I mean of course the commercial racket. The interchange of presents was a very small ingredient in the older English festivity. Mr. Pickwick took a cod with him in Dingley Dell; the reformed Scrooge ordered a turkey for his clerk; lovers sent love gifts; toys and fruit were given to children. But the idea that not only all friends but even all acquaintances should give one another presents, or at least send one another cards, is quite modern and has been forced upon us by the shopkeepers. Neither of these circumstances is in itself a reason for condemning it. I condemn it on the following grounds.

1. It gives on the whole much more pain than pleasure. You have only to stay over Christmas with a family who seriously try to "keep" it (in its third, or commercial, aspect) in order to see that the thing is a nightmare. Long worn out by weeks of daily struggle in overcrowded shops, mentally worn out by the effort to remember all the right recipients and to think out suitable gifts for them. They are in no trim for merry making; much less (if they should want to) to take part in a religious act. They look far more as if there had been a long illness in the house.

2. Most of it is involuntary. The modern rule is that anyone can force you to give him a present by sending you a quite unprovoked present of his own. It is almost a blackmail. Who has not heard the wail of despair, and indeed of resentment, when, at the last moment, just as everyone hoped that the nuisance was over for one more year, the unwanted gift from Mrs. Busy (whom we hardly remember) flops unwelcomed through the letter-box, and back to the dreadful shops one of us has to go?

3. Things are given as presents which no mortal ever bought for himself - gaudy and useless gadgets, "novelties" because no one was ever fool enough to make their like before. Have we really no better use for materials and for human skill and time than to spend them on all this rubbish?

4. The nuisance. For after all, during the racket we still have all our ordinary and necessary shopping to do, and the racket trebles the labor of it.

We are told that the whole dreary business must go on because it is good for trade. It is in fact merely one annual symptom of that lunatic condition of our country, and indeed of the world, in which everyone lives by persuading everyone else to buy things. I don't know the way out. But can it really be my duty to buy and receive masses of junk every winter just to help the shopkeepers? If the worst come to the worst I'd sooner give them money for nothing and write it off as a charity. For nothing? Why, better for nothing than a nuisance.

The Silmarillion

(1977)
J.R.R. Tolkien

Finished Reading: 08.2009

Being the tale of the entire history of Middle Earth, this narration is painted with broad and lofty strokes. Great expeditions across many leagues of map are described, but how the journeyers camped out or what they ate in the evenings is not within the scope of writing. The places where dwelt many men and elves are often described only as places with singular emotion, such as "The people seemed happy there." Little if anything is said of the architecture of these places outside a few off-hand mentions of great towers, great halls or terrible pits within which you would not want to find yourself. Many a battle is fought on mighty hills and lasted for many long weary days but might be described only as such:

"And there was a great battle and many elves and dwarves were slain."

However, a few times we trip over a node on the Timeline of Middle Earth, and stumble into an interesting situation involving the people and places we find in that age. The glue that holds many disparate stories together is the story of the Silmarils. The Silmarils are three very rare and precious jewels mysteriously created by the Noldorian Elf Feanor, within which is contained the radiance of pure light - the original light of the Two Trees and older are they than even the sun. So sought after are these, that they cause many wars to be fought between good and evil and even wars between good and good (kin-strife or worse). The dark lord Morgoth is ever seeking them and often possesses all three, having their beauty for a time set in his iron crown. Kings are murdered, loves are lost, and greed conquers all. The radiance of the past is increasingly diminished by progressing shadows as evil besets all who desire the infinitely worthy and irreplaceable Silmarils.

A most fascinating aspect of the Silmarillion is that it tells us more of the early origins of the beloved characters from The Lord of the Rings. Did you know that Galadrial is Elrond's mother-in-law? She is also his great great aunt on his father's side. Elrond's great great grandmother was a divine Maia from the original creation of the world, and his great grandfather was a mortal man with only one hand named Beren. Crazy Elrond.

A particularly exciting story tells of when Beren stole a Silmaril from the crown of Morgoth and as his hand was clenched around the sacred jewel, that hand and the jewel were bitten off by a fell beast. Later, the beast was hunted down and destroyed and upon slicing open its belly, there was found within the still clenched hand of Beren and within his grasp the Silmaril, which was regained.

Another important tale is the condensed version of the journeys of Turin son of Hurin, as appears in full in The Children of Hurin. Turin accidentally marries his sister and she becomes pregnant. Neither knows the other is kin, but after slaying a mighty dragon Turin has to deal with his family issues. Upon learning of her fate from the mouth of that very dragon, the sister-wife hurls herself off a mighty cliff and falls to her perilous end. Turin takes his sword and falls upon it, and evil prevails in the land.

An additional interesting story is the Creation of the World, which began by thoughts and singing. The music becomes reality and is then lived out by the creatures of the earth.

Also told is the tale of how Sauron went from run-of-the-mill bad guy to all powerful flaming eyeball in his tall tower. He was a sort of grand vizier to a king of men, and then established his own kingdom before losing his physical body in the drowning deluge of the entire western half of Middle Earth. I'm not surprised he resorted to the safety of a tall tower from which he could keep unblinking watch for further bad weather, rising seas, and newly drawn maps of Middle Earth.

In the end, the whole of The Lord of the Rings, told elsewhere in three volumes and about 1200 pages, is summarized in the last two pages of this book. A lot happens in between those two pages, but that is another story.