LIVE STREAM Replay: Always Winter and Never Christmas?

Hello and welcome to it's always winter but never Christmas. This is the Oxford Centre for Fantasy spending time with C. S. Lewis and Tolkien and special guests on the theme of the holiday season. Now as you can see we have with us Malcolm Geight, poet and writer and Anglican priest and Catherine Langerish who is a novelist and fairy and folktale expert and it's a great delight because they both are experts on all things Tolkien and Lewis so we're going to have a lot of fun in this session now. So first of all just thinking about Christmas the first of these writers between Lewis and Tolkien that you tend to think of is of course C. S. Lewis and I think he's almost got his own Christmas season now thanks to the stage versions of the Lion and the Witch and the Wardrobe. I mean that's for two reasons obviously it has the one full snowy landscapes which lend themselves to Christmas shows but also it has the very special arrival of a Christmas guest in the middle and we'll come to him in a minute. But perhaps we like to start by saying what are your memories of either Tolkien or Lewis in connection with your own Christmases back in the day? Did you have any special moments that you remember? Cath I think you had a story that you told me? Yes well it just so happens that the Christmas I was 8 I think it was. My mother I was used to get books for Christmas because I was a massive bookworm even then and my mother must have picked for me one of the non-ear books she cannot have realised that there was a series I think because she chose the silver chair and so as I was opening my Christmas presents amongst all the enid lightens out pop this book the silver chair and it had a cover the famous puffin book with the cover by Pauline Baines featuring the underground caverns and lots and lots of little gnomes or goblins and I looked at this and I shuddered. I really put me off I didn't think I was going to like this book at all because about a year earlier I came across a truly truly dreadful fairy tale called the Hobbios in my school reading book featuring featuring extremely unpleasant little goblins and this completely freaking out so I left the silver chair to the very last of my Christmas books but I really couldn't resist I mean it was a book I hadn't read and I think my mother knew that I would come round to it in the end and so I opened it and I was just blown away you know there I was in this amazing world of of a fairy tale talking hours and castles and lost princes and green ladies and serpents and it was so exciting and so relatable and even though a fairy tale so very physical I was just enchanted and of course this was in the 60s and sort of CSLOS was really huge all my friends were reading the same books and we almost formed this bond at school where we talk about Nania we it wasn't even that we wanted to we wanted to be there we wanted to go there wasn't so much that we wanted to have adventures there we simply wanted to be there so it really was one of the best Christmas presents in my life I think really how about you Malcolm did you ever get something like that for Christmas oh that's wonderful I do love that thing Catherine about just wanting to be there not necessarily just to have adventures there but to be there yes the quality of the land itself well being there and or at least Christmas and the line in which the wardrobe had a sort of early association for me which is slightly odd because I was born in Nigeria and brought up there and in Zimbabwe until I was until I was 10 and although we sumpt each year we went back to England on leave it was almost always in the summer but solemnly at Christmas in both Nigeria and Zimbabwe the expat community exchanged Christmas cards with robins in the snow and you know snow falling everywhere and fur trees and sleigh bells and reindeer and I would be curious as a little boy what what is this white stuff was that oh that's that's that's from from from back home you know you'll get that one because there was referred to somewhere else as home whereas I you know I didn't know any of that home other than the place with you know with with the the poor pause and the bananas and the beautiful palms you know so and then eventually one Christmas you know an African Christmas I was amidst all the other cards I was given a copy of the line the witch in the wardrobe and there was all this snow and fur coats and snow and fur trees and so there was a sort of strange fusion in my mind going on between nine here in England and I kind of want I some of thought perhaps England becomes more magical in the winter you know there was something and in fact my favorite of the non-earth stories I got I got to say it remains my favorite is the voyage of the dawn treader and I was excited because that mentioned the actual name of a place in England as the start of the story and that place was Cambridge and eventually we suddenly left we very suddenly when I was I mean I sort of was a bit too honest but but now that time we very suddenly left Zimbabwe my in Smith as it was really easy then had declared UDI had essentially an illegal government my father was opposed to his racist interference into the life of the university anyway we ended up being expelled well in fact my mother and my sister left first and the place we went to was Cambridge and I had this sequence on it somewhere in Cambridge there is a house with a picture of an onion ship I need to find the house I tried the backs of various wardrobes so yes there was a sort of magical thing and something about homecoming blended in because of Christmas and the snow wow I think for me my association is not for my own childhood but for my children's childhoods so many years ago when they were very little I mean toddlers their godfather lived at the kilns which is CS Lewis's home and where the young professionals lived during most of the year and then they move out to allow the CS Lewis Society to have their summer courses anyway so whilst the godfather was living there the the people living there decided to throw a Christmas party for the children of their friends and the way the kilns works is that the attic has a it's not up in a sort of a ladder it runs along the eaves so they took the back off a wardrobe oh wow and they put it over the attic door and then they dressed the inside of the attic with I suppose cotton wall and fairy lights and a lamp post and then put fur well fake fur coats in the wardrobe so the children literally in CS Lewis's house walked through a wardrobe into the attic and that's my abiding memory of that which was so special that's lovely so let's go back to the sort of the theme of Christmas in the actual books and obviously in terms of CS Lewis and Nania we're talking about a world of talking animals that's how he thought of it that's that's the sort of nub of the idea behind it but you get much more than talking animals in Nania and you get some very strange guests turning up including lots of guests from Greek mythology and others but famously in the line in which in the wardrobe you also get the arrival of Father Christmas what is he doing there now can you help us can you help us with this well yeah I mean I know actually I mean a lot of readers don't like Father Christmas as appearance in Nania and they feel he's sort of somehow out of place there in fact my husband says that as a little boy he he felt it was something wrong about it personally I never minded although I do think possibly Lewis was wise not to invite him back but frankly when a writer has come up with a wonderful phrase like always winter in another Christmas I know they tell you to kill your darlings but I don't think that's a darling that you know you you can bring yourself to kill so we had to do something and let me just remind you how Lewis describes him you've got to remember where it happens the beavers and the preferences have escaped from the the Dan yes because the white witch is after them and they realize that Edmund has betrayed them and they're hiding in a hole in a river bank and they hear sleigh bells and they feel that it may be the white witch so Mr Beaver bravely goes out to look and of course he finds it's not the white witch it's Father Christmas with his brown and he calls them out and then we are told that what they see is a huge man in a bright red robe brightest hollyberries with a hood that had fur inside and a great white beard that fell like a foamy waterfall over his chest and then we're told that he was so big and so glad and so real that they all became quite still so I think he knows that we there's a little bit I've missed out where he's told that they knew who he was immediately but he's not like you think of him here he's this he's got this extra present and I think that the hollyberry comparison now reminds me of the green night and go away in the green night but a look who rides into Arthur's hall with a holly branch in his hand the greatest in green and groves a bear and combines pagan giant elf and Christian in a single figure but I'm also reminded of other winter spirits there's the Russian Morosko Father Frost and in Russian fairy tales he's the white bearded spirit of the snowy woods who may if you address him very politely give you gifts instead of freezing you to death I have a little picture here by Ivan Billyburn you have to look a little bit carefully I like to you can see him but there you will see the figure of Morosko addressing a shivering damsel who's waiting for him in the woods and this comes from a fairy tale collected by Alexander up and up and I can never say this Alexander a panacea there you go and then this fairy tale a jealous setmother persuade her husband to take his daughter out into the woods on a cold winter night and leave her to die in the forest she says drive Marfa to her bridegroom old man drive into the forest right up to the big pine that stands on the hill and their hand Marfa over to Morosko Frost and I thought I would just read what happened is because here I have this ancient book of Russian fairy tales and the girl is left shivering in the forest she sat and shivered the cold had pierced her through she would have cried aloud but she had not strength enough only her teeth shattered suddenly she heard a sound not far off Frost was crackling away on a fur from fur to fur he was leaping and snapping his fingers presently appeared on the very pine under which the maiden was sitting and from above her head he cried at the warm maiden warm warm my dear father Frost she replied Frost began to descend lower all the more crackling and snapping his fingers to the maiden said Frost at the warm maiden at the warm fur one warm and I frost dear warm and I father dear Frost began cracking more than ever and more loudly did he snap his fingers into the maiden he said at the warm maiden at the warm pretty one at the warm my darling the girl was by this time numb with cold and she could scarcely make herself heard she replied oh quite warm frost theorist now Frost then takes pity on the girl he wraps her up in fur and blankets and next day when the stepmother sends her father out to bring back the body she's sitting there dressed in a beautiful bridal shawl with a casket of jewels and of course this gets taken back and then of course the stepmother sent her young daughters out into the woods with hope that they will come back with a similar bounty only their rude to grandfather Frost and freeze to death so I checked and it seems that Morosco was originally a Slavic snow spirit or winter wizard apparently he was suppressed under the Soviet Union as being a bit too fanciful and sort of suspiciously sort of churchy pretty strange but it's now very popular again and I've even found a picture of Vladimir Putin meeting an effigy of Morosco and he he he's very similar I mean he's got the long white beard the fur coat the fur hat the boots he carries a magic staff and he rides in a triker but going back to father christmas how far the christmas has got very different origin from the American Santa Claus he's not descended from St Nicholas he's a spirits or a personification of the winter festival and you'll find that in the 16th century a character called father Yule used to parade through the city of york on the winter solstice December 21st riding a goat or being drawn in a carriage pulled by a goat carrying a loaf of bread and a leg of lamb and this custom was suppressed in 1572 by a not an annoyed archbishop he appeared in mark masks and entertainment throughout the tudor period as captain christmas or sir christmas and in a court mask of 1638 in which shrug tied in christmas sort of vie for supremacy christmas appears as an old reverend gentleman in a third gown and cap who proclaims I am the king of good cheer and feasting though I come but once a year to reign over baked boiled roast and plum porridge so I think if you can set aside the very commercial father christmas that were unfortunately stuck with today his appearance in nine years a lot easier to accept if you think of him as having this ancestry of ancient winter spirit whose appearance signifies celebration and feasting in the middle of very harsh weather I think it's easier to sort of accept if you've got problems with this at all which I tend to be honest I was always impressed by the gifts that he comes with it's not like the ones that I got at the end of my bed you know sort a bone arrow but also a tea service very useful not to mention not to mention mending Mrs beaver's say well giving Mrs beaver an entire sewing machine indeed exactly in the drawings like the ones my mother had and used my mother actually in appearance was very like Mrs beaver she's quite small and round and often sitting at a singer sewing machine so I was loved that no I have to say I did like for you in the whole father christmas episode it didn't because I was so little when I got that first line the witch in the wardrobe that I needed help and my mother and father between them read it to me and it was partly where I think I was associated with my mother and Mrs beaver who was very pleased about this and my father you know did all the voices wonderfully and did a very good father Christmas I was very excited by that episode because I had an ear and an eye for detail and I had remembered that the white witch had instructed her minions not to take the bells when she went on the slay in pursuit so I thought oh bells is it but I thought there were no bells and then it's a wonderful dramatic moment where just where they think is to be the most danger comes this jovial convivial wonderful spirit of encouragement yeah so I mean I I'm totally with you careful me let's not go back to an American tradition or even St Nick in that sense certainly not the diminutive little figure of the night before Christmas there is a this is father you this is a great embodiment of the kind of warmth and feasting and the whole essentially human spirit that says when things are bleak and cold outside we shall be snug we shall have warmth we shall have it's it's it's you know the person who gets that snugness and warmth and indeed that whole spirit so well as Dickens of course and you know in some ways Dickens convivial green cloud Christmas spirit and then Christmas Carol is is very much there there's a brilliant short story which I'm sure Lewis knew a lot of short stories really says a little anecdote almost in the Chesterton's tremendous trifles where Chesterton meets father Christmas he finds him in a little shop in the dingy back street in Battersea and and he's very worried about me he says oh you know I'm not very worried he refuses to take money for a toy that that Chesterton's buying he says I can't so a new fangled thinker taking money I can't do it I have always given things away and then Chesterton's way you might be father Christmas this well I am I'm not very well at the moment I mean declining and then suddenly Charles Dickens walks into the shop and says but he was dying in my time good to see you father Christmas and then Sir Richard Steele what's in it says but I believe he was dying in my time and then Robin Hood steps in and the whole shop is to the stories called the shop of Ghost is full of people going right back into English history and literature for whom this figure has been important all of whom were slightly worried that he was dying in their time so so anyway all of that but I mentioned the jaw reality and there's a very interesting thing that as I'm sure you know deep and important as was the friendship between Lewis and Tolkien and vital as was Lewis's role in being as talking himself that at one point his only audience is only readership and asking more for him talking was to some degree out of sympathy with the non-earth project and one of the things that he found most irritating explicitly was father Christmas and that was because in spite of his having produced these wonderful father Christmas so the reason was to do with his sense of genre and form and he didn't think he could mix mythologies he simply thought you cannot have forms and father Christmas in the same secondary world there's a there's a there's a dissonance and a mismatch now Michael Warden his wonderful book planet non-ear has has ably defended Lewis by pointing out that as it were each of the seven chronicles is under the the sort of presiding genius or tutula spirit of one of the medieval seven heavens one of which of course is the sphere of jove or Jupiter from which we get the word jovial and also ideas Jupiter is associated of course with kingship with royalty with but through kingship and royalty he's associated with large-est generosity feasting and he's the opposite as it were of the freezing satan he's that you know so according to to Ward's theory the sign under which the whole of the line the which in the wardrobe is Jupiter just as the sign of the dawn treader is Saul the salad of the sign of the silver chair is the moon and he therefore thinks that that that Lewis produces a kind of consistency of field throughout the book by taking the associated cluster of ideas in relation to Jupiter so kingship is obviously a great theme of the thing I mean the whole point of the story in some senses that they're going to be crowned as the kings and queens and care parallel and they're on that journey good feasting the feasting produced by father Christmas is the prime thing but in that book you constantly get the shadow side of each thing so the shadow side of the good feasting the false Christmassy gift is the the gift of the Turkish Delighted Queen and she also promises a false kingship yes to Edmund so you get you get the it's a wonderfully Augustinean but you get the sense that all the evil in that book are our corruptions of an initial good there's a good version of everything that has an enormous yes waiting behind everything every small perversion that has to be said no to there's the big yes version of it so there's the feasted care parallel and so in a sense father Christmas in that that sheer bonnemy and large s and giving and serious giving with no strings attached no extraction no is the kind of good counterbalance to the the parallel encounter in snowy woods with them it's quite a mythical figure and that she is a kind of snow queen of course so in a sense I think Lewis has taken two big mythical figures I'm sure your Russian counterparts are all in there just as the the hands-on to snow queen is there and and he's he's used the one to counterbalance the other so I think the whole father I mean I don't I don't you you would be the same book if you mentioned that episode I think it's a very important part in the whole constellation of goodness that is plustering around the image of the jovial and and all um all giving king I like that and I'm now seeing the um Father Christmas's wonderful cup of hot strong tea with cream in it as the the counterpart or the or the opposite of the snow the snow queens um drink which I think she she sort of um she it's not really a drink is it but she sort of drops from a bottle some some yeah right is as it falls and produces I think Turkish to life at the moment it's no it's it's it's it's it's a it's a it's a beautiful but uses a drink here but that's right or something like that yes yeah yeah so so that's definitely not not very good for Redmond either yeah I have a pretty I've always enjoyed Father Christmas and I mean I've said it like the toy center it's always interesting for me of course particularly since my hair so turn white at this time of year when I'm walking along the streets or in trains very small children tug their mothers um and points excitedly to me and I I say saying I'm on holiday before the big season you know I think that's a wonderful image to take away with us from the line in the Witch and the Wardrobe but if we were looking to do more Christmas shows with a C.S. Lewis feel are any of the other books that he writes lending themselves to this season I was thinking of your mention of the Silver Chair which um actually does have a wintry you feel to it oh yes yes well apart from the fact that I was given the book at Christmas and it would have been a snowy Christmas because it was probably sort of 1963 64 yeah which was very very snowy um yes I mean does nothing quite so cozy is that this is what Malcolm was saying about about sitting in a lovely warm house reading about a freezing winter journey um so yeah I mean it's not necessarily Christmas time because the Giants feast in Harfang is is called the Autumn Feast but they do get their sort of blizzard um and they are eating just to mention they're eating turkey oh yes yes I forgot about that all as well as and humans but you know I also eat sort of a talking deer I think and they're always very sad um but yes and and I just remember and I still enjoy this um reading about you know their miserable struggle at the wet soaking snow-filled ledges you know arriving at the gate of Harfang bruised and miserable and tired and crotchety um and then being welcomed into this um you know into the apparent the deceptive warmth and shelter of Harfang and what always struck me even when I was a child was the sheer physical pleasure of um the contrast if you like of of Jill having a bath in a giant tub that's so large you can swim in it hot water so much that you can swim in it and then getting out and having an enormous i acres of giant towel on which you all you have to do is roll around in front of the planet to get tried and frankly anybody that anybody from my generation and possibly your generation welcome who who lived in a pretty sort of chilly house without double glazing um you know fired mostly that heated mostly by cold fast you know getting out of a bath to get yourself dry in a pretty chilly bathroom the idea of being able to just roll around on a on a great big towel into a huge fire was was wonderful I mean I always wanted to try it well I always think you know all the sort of physical pleasures in those books are partly driven I think by the really quite dire experience of England immediately after the war internationally not a lot of fuel for heating trough the rooms short commons to give the children at least in these books these wonderful feasts and unashamedly glorious feasts so there's I suppose the other I mean perhaps this is a bit um wicked I don't know but another feature you might think from the half-bang scenes that might be familiar to some people from Christmas parties is um is probably I'm having a little bit more of the bottle than is good for him getting himself a bit a bit well there's a wonderful bit where he keeps on trying to say but can't quite manage to say I'm a respectable marsh with him and he says respectably go I'm a respectably and then of course he makes out that he was only pretending in order to get in it and you know there's it's a lovely bit of sort of weakness in puddle gum I'm puddle gum is one of my favorite characters in that book and the lovely idea of the sort of the apparently gloomy person who has this inner courage and when he sees it on a thing that's really the case changes the course of the story so yeah I think that's true I mean I think you might have the other books um they don't have I mean the obvious thing to say if we want to speak of course he was very careful many times over Lewis to say that it's not an allegory but a supposal and that he's only trying to think of supposing that that God Almighty were to be be born into another world which is a world of animals of course he would be a lion and so but even given that it's a supposal and not an allegory it is quite striking that there are no infancy narratives for Aslan Aslan always appears I mean in that sense I mean although he draws on John a lot in terms of the narrative arc um the the nine he had is much more like Marx gospel of course Marx symbol is the lion um when when Marx gospel Jesus appears immediately he's there you know John the Baptist proclaims him and he's he's there he's out he's fully formed he's come to proclaim the kingdom which is exactly what Aslan does to user I mean you know it's so it's an absence quite marking and sort of feel feel to that of course Marx doesn't have the the infancy narrative so we don't have that and I don't think Lewis could have done it successfully and I I think he knew he couldn't so the closest he gets to it in some sense of another transformation which isn't so much Christmasy in fact it's kind of more history but is is is is the appearance um at the end of the law the dawn treader as the lamb um and um a direct direct quotation from John 21 come and have breakfast um and the fish grilling on on on thing and and the those who encounter him getting out of a boat in order to do so and so that that that that's very um very clear but I I think the Christmas associations are the others are much more to do with those of us who were lucky enough to have these books doled out to us with a year in between waiting desperately for the next one and waiting for Christmas to come so that the next book would come even though you know I was reading them after the series had been completed my parents sensibly um didn't didn't go out and get the box set you know they they let me live with a book for quite a while and then they gave me the next one oh I longed to own the box set because I never ever did oh I I eventually bought the book so I mean yeah I I've lived with and read and reread these books and more like so then of course I did have the pleasure of reading them to my children and um yeah though for me I think the Christmas the Christmas side of it is much more to do with the snugness the conviviality the sense that we shall have a feast I mean there's a wonderful description of the feast that's set out and renewed every day on Aslan's table at the at the end of the dawn trailer and the bed and you know and that I think that lay that defended me I mean it wouldn't be able to say it's at a time but it defended me imaginatively and at a very deep level from dacetism and you know Jesus wasn't really in the flesh or from an overspiritualized religion from any sort of pure tale of the goodness you know what what Dante calls the holy and glorious flesh I think I think all that good honest thoroughly enjoyable unashamed celebratory feasting around something holy yeah they are of course the direct our Christmas reference in the nanias in the naniad Lewis saves for the very last one um where he deliberately makes it a stable into which they're all driven but the stable really is the door into an asense contains that and they whereas inside the stable is the whole of naniah and then asans country and it's left to Lucy of course who's always the the most perspicuous and I mean her name Lucy means like she receives to the heart of everything Lucy she says in our world and a stable in our world can once contain something bigger than the whole world Lewis is probably thinking of that beautiful line of john dunes to marry actually into where he says immensity clustered in the idea womb um so yeah there's a lovely little reference just at the end of the naniad to the stable yes so whilst we're in the stable and perhaps Malcolm you might want to read us the nativity poem by cs Lewis himself it's a poem which you might have met in an anthology but let's enjoy the season with oh it's just I love this I love this he's thinking about the beasts at the stable it's a poem of great humility actually but also I'm never kind of quite a human self-deprecating human the nativity among the oxen like an ox I'm slow I see a glory in the stable grow which with ox's dullness might at length give me an ox's strength among the asses stubborn I as they I see my savior where I looked for hey so may my beast like folly learn at least the patience of a beast among the sheep I like a sheep of strayed I watch the manger when my lord is laid oh that my buying nature would thence win some woolly innocence that's a fabulous poem win dance yeah yeah um Malcolm you mentioned that he also has a more serious riff on this in his thinking is about Milton's ode yeah it's kind of very curious thing I don't know I've got a month so so Milton as you know wrote a poem called Ode on the morning of Christ's nativity which is a long beautiful I'm just hoping I've got the the Lewis premiere I had it marked but um so it's a long beautiful poem which starts off in spend serious terms of and asks to come ahead of the magey and be at the stable and then um and then it moves to a different meter a rather beautiful lyrical meter it was the winter wild when the heaven-born child I mean Lee Ratt and it it it has the idea that uh that when Christ was born this is Milton has this early idea it was a classical idea that that that there was a moment when Christ was born when everything was completely still when the angel sang and proclaimed peace that there was peace that every war ceased every for a moment every spear was held in the hand and not released and it was the turn of the tide everything was going to change from here and all over all over the empire so the story went people as it were paused for brass it breath here I mean so Lewis wrote this rather extraordinary poem the turn of the tide in which he not only imagines the world still but he imagines a wave as it were of breathless stillness is it you know this is the turn this is the moment when the creator from beyond all things enters the creation and the entire creation is thus transparent and can that be the same again I just give you a few phrases of it because I think it's it starts and ends in Bethlehem it's a poem that starts in Bethlehem goes out to the furthest ends of the cosmos and then comes back to Bethlehem I'll just I'll just give you the opening in the closing the Bethlehem that's because they're really beautiful breathless was the air over Bethlehem black and bare with the fields hard as granite the clouds hedges stiff with ice the sedge in the vice of the pool like pointed rods and the deathly stillness spread from Bethlehem it was shed wider each moment on the land through rampant or wall into camp into all stole the hush the tones were to stand and he goes out now reposes there's a complete stillness and he imagines this stillness as deathly like people are thinking is this it time has stopped for a second is this the end the cosmos is coming to an end and that's where it's deathly it's breathless and there's one sense of course in which it is the old order is coming to its end and then he goes right out he imagines great salamanders in the sun with brandishes they run tails like the americans in size were stunned by it and then they're all everything is completely still and they wonder if this is the beginning of the entropy of the unworking of everything the death had almost come the tide lay motionless at ab and then there's a gap in the poet and he picks up the thread again it's like a literally a pause of blomp like a stab at the movement over crab and bowman over maiden line came the shock of returning life the start and burning pang at heart setting galleagues he's to tingle and rock and the Lord's dead to breathe and the swords were sheve and a rustling and a relaxing began with rumour of noise of the resuming joys i mean on the nerves of the universe it ran then pulsing into space with delicate dulcet pace came a music this is from the Milton Aude it built in says you know bring out e crystal about spheres once bless our human ears if you have power to touch our senses so you know so now the music is coming a music infinitely small and clear but it swelled and drew near and held all worlds in the sharpens of its goal and now divinely deep and allowed it with a sweet quivering and inebriating sound wonderful and so it comes there's great revel and mirth enjoying all the spheres and then the poem ends like this so death lay in a rest but at Bethlehem the blessed nothing greater could be heard that a dry wind in the thorn the cry of one newborn and cattle in storm as they stood but of course the one newborn has a capital that's wonderful kind of out from the moment in the stable to the end of the cosmos and then back to the dry wind and just the cry of the babe but everything has changed i think what's extraordinary about that is that's not a voice I associate with C.S. Lewis the first one the nativity with the I calling himself an ass is totally something you yeah totally in in his you know willhouse but that I think it's quite almost like a way to read that again it's great I mean he's partly under Milton he's allowing himself a meltonic moment but also there's another side I wrote the chapter on Lewis as a poet for the for the Cambridge Companion so I spent some time really soaking myself in Lewis's poetry and benefited from that enormously but one of the things I became aware of is that if you want to know where all the deep rather mystical imminent god bar fieldian stuff went in Lewis when you didn't quite put it in the more orthodox book the answer is he went into the poetry he's very Owen Barfield very sort of original participation and final participation and organic unity Lewis the poet allows himself a much more a much richer sense of you know lose the theologian is often it pains to to emphasize the transcendence of god and the and the failure of every worldly thing in respect of god's transcendence but Lewis the poet allows himself a kind of cosmic mysticism which I think is wrong and lovely thank you that's lovely so leaving CS Lewis in his mystical space that's this is a good moment to turn to middle earth now when I first thought of this my initial reaction was um okay middle earth doesn't have Christmas or doesn't have a Christmas style festival but actually cat has put me right so cat in talking in the legendarium that side of him where do you go to celebrate midwinter festival well um yeah it's not immediately obvious perhaps but there are middle earth does actually have a fairly extensive um you'll tide or winter festival tradition um and these are touched on or perhaps a few different traditions but they seem to me to be sort of linked um they you'll find them touched upon never really sort of brought out particularly in the hobbit in the Lord of the Rings and its appendices and a couple of other places too so for example you have to delve into the appendices sometimes in appendix d we learn that the shire celebrates two yule days which are the last and first days of the olden new years these days were counted as outside the months so the first month of the new year was named after you and the last month was for you and this is a quote in full talking ads yule tide was six days long including the last three days and first three days of each year and since the shire calendar is based upon the new manorian calendar known as kings reckoning i think we can probably safely assume that some sort of midwinter festival was also celebrated in gondor but that's you know that's an assumption anyway so in the hobbit um when Gandalf and Bilbo returning from the lonely mountain right at the end of the book um they are accompanied by Bjorn and they stay at Bjorn's house um for some time on their return journey and celebrate yule there um and it says yule tide was warm and merry there and men came from far and wide to feast at Bjorn's bidding which i think would probably be rather nice because there'd be plenty of roast meats and honey and at the the end of the return of the king Frodo and this is after the scouring of the shire Frodo and his friends are delighted to discover stores of goods food drink in tobacco which have been stashed away by saramans ruffians and hidden in various places like the holes at nickel delving oh and in the old quarries at scurry i presume it's scurry rather than scary so that there was a great deal better cheer that yule than anyone had hoped for so the hobbits i think we can safely assume have a pretty good time at the yule there are a heron it turns out also celebrate yule but the only description i can find of it is an appendix A of the Lord of the Rings and it can hardly be typical at least i hope not um because during the long winter in the time of Helm Hammerhand Helm's deep was besieged by the Dunlendings um and we have in Helm's deep that there was a great hunger after yule Helm's son Hammer is lost in the snow after a foray and Helm goes mad with grief and just in white would stalk like a snow troll into the caps of his enemies and slay men with his hands the Dunlendings said if you could find no food he ate men and there's a little quote here from appendix A Helm had a great horn and it was marked that before he sallied forth he would blow a blast upon it that echoed in the deep and then so great a fear fell on his enemies instead of gathering to take him or kill him they fled away one night men heard the horn blowing but Helm did not return in the morning there came a sunglean the first for long days and they saw white figure standing still on the dike alone there stood Helm dead as a stone but his knees were unbent yet men said that the horn was still heard at times in the deep and the wrath of Helm would walk among the foes of Rohan and kill men with fear so not terribly Christmassy story but it wasn't you there is a tradition of Christmas ghosts there is also a tradition of Christmas ghosts and I think that's a pretty good Christmas ghost in fact it's all very northern and sargo-like which is unsurprising if you think that winter festivals do tend to be about celebrating and anticipating the return of the sun and the rebirth of the year in the cold dark season and obviously the further north you go probably the more the more important these festivals have become and so quite uniquely I would say from middle earth the dwarfs winter festival celebrates a named individual durin's day occurs on the first day of the last moon of autumn on the threshold in winter and the legend tells us this is this is relying upon the appendices again tells us how durin slept alone until in the depths of time he was awakened he's the great ancestor of the dwarfs and lived so long he was known as Durin the Deathless yet in the end he died before the elder days had passed and his tomb was in Kazadun but his line never failed and five times that air was born so like to his forefather that he received the name of Durin he was indeed held by the dwarfs to be the Deathless that returned and so I think here like Christmas in Durin's day we have a winter festival that hangs upon a single personage who died and yet is reborn just a thought that's interesting yeah and my final the final example that I could find which there may be others but this was this was the the result of my scouring of the legendary money well I'm not sure this isn't the legendary but in the book of lost tales the owls of toll aresia celebrate a winter festival called Turohami or log drawing which apparently involve games in the snow the gathering of logs on the slaves songs drinking and the telling of tales now do you know I am so thrilled that I think there can't be a Tolkien fan out there listening to this who won't feel they've not got their money's worth because I've never I've never heard all of that put together quite so no I never have yeah I remember you you with Bae on a mountain absolutely right with Bae on the and you is really important I mean obviously there's no way that I mean Tolkien would never have done I never in a million years have done what Lewis did and introduce the word Christmas because the whole magic of Tolkien's thing could persist on completely letting that secondary world be itself now obviously Tolkien's are deeply deeply versed and and profoundly faithful Christian and therefore the great themes of light and darkness the great themes of resurrection indeed and of course the profound theme I mean if I were to associate it with the the the order of the ring certain with any kind of arc of of the great Christian it's much more about good Friday and then eventually you know the the eucotastrophe of resurrection I mean the epic towards the end I mean the whole epic if you think about it is an epic of letting go that was strikes me as being extraordinary thing if you think of how Tolkien had within his grasp and in bedding in his imagination the mythology the entire mythology of the west and the north for sure and lots of others as well and all the great quests I think without exception somebody may correct me on this but all the great quests associated with the treasure or a magical object of any kind are quests of acquisition you know Jason's got to go and get the gold and fleece people have got to go and get the apples from the garden of their disparities the hero is always going out to acquire something and that something brings with it magical powers and makes the hero more of a hero gives them life or whatever it is all that brings restoration to their kingdom Tolkien is unique in writing an epic of letting go and that's why it's such a prophetic book now for the the age of consumption an age that's consuming itself to death an age that's relying on the acquisition of various kinds of quasi-magical technologies just to extend life but only spreading it out like butter spread there were too much bread you know whereas the heart of this thing is the recognition that the real liberation will come from a renunciation from a letting go I mean I think theologically that's to do with Kenosis I think it's to do with you know they was founded in four week with God he did not cling to he emptied himself but the whole ethos of it is an ethos of emptying rather than filling which makes it less appropriate to a Christmas thing but very appropriate to to to the mysteries of of good Friday and Easter I think that's where I'd nobody it is it is appropriate to Christmas I mean it's not appropriate to Santa Claus and presents but it's appropriate to the idea of God taking on human flesh as a tiny oh absolutely that's and that's completely what you see in the Nativity plays and everything that's yeah what they would all regard as the message of Christmas I'm sure both Tolkien and us low-hearball convergence woo you know yeah yeah absolutely no no there's nothing I wonder about you you mentioned my doing a poem actually this might be really a appropriate moment to throw a poem in if I may oh off you go for a moment yeah um I wrote a poem sometime ago called it was published in my single what called descent and um I obviously I because it's a poem printed in the page I had to spell the word descent and I've spelled it d-e-s-e-e-n-t because it's about help empty this descent but I wanted when I read it people to hear the other sense of descent to descent from something and the idea here is that just as talking reverses the legendary so there's a sense in which in my view the the the Christian story changes the great sort of classical late pagan anti late pagan antiquity the kind of classical mountain of the Olympian gods the gods on high and the religious quest is being an ascent um and and the gods being in every respect superior to human beings and you know they are the immortals we are the mortals they they are they are perfect and flawless and we we are subject to changing to catch so I wrote this poem which just has a series of contrasts in a sense between the religious the the religions around to which god as it were in the act of incarnation says I beg to differ I descent but so so this is it it's quite a short poem um it's written in English suffix which is um a meter George Herbert like to use and the reason I chose it is that it's four stress lines but the last line of each quattrain is just four words so it diminishes descent they sought to soar into the skies those classic gods of high renown for lofty pride aspires to rise but you came down you dropped down from the mountain's sheer for sure the eagle for the dove the other gods demanded fear but you gave love where chiseled marble seems to freeze their abstract and perfected form compassion brought you to your knees your blood was warm they called for blood in sacrifice and victims on their alters glad when no one else could pay the price you died instead they towered above our mortal plain dismissed this restless flesh with scorn aloof from birth and death and pain but you were born born to these burdens born by all born with us all astride the grave weak to be with us when we fall and strong to save that's lovely thank you so much Malcolm I just I adore here we repurchase just wonderful thank you um so just to finish with with Tolkien before we move on to the whole question of fantasy and Christmas in wider frame um I had a little ruffle around in things that weren't part of the strictly speaking the legendarium and remembered that in the smith of wooden major the beginning of that story takes part of the big cake special cake being made for the feast of the good children which sounds like the quintessential christmas thing if ever there was one perhaps more like the st. Nicholas festival that a lot of the continental countries celebrate at the beginning of December so that I think had an element of Christmasy about it but of course you know the the big one is the fabulous the father Christmas letters which is edited by uh Bailey Tolkien who is Christopher Tolkien's second wife uh I hadn't actually looked that up until today um I've got I think this must be a first edition actually my family was my husband's family were friendly with Tolkien back in the 20s so we always got like first editions of everything in the family because um which is great but I pulled this off the shelf um and as you can see this is based on a family tradition in the Tolkien household where every year Tolkien would well no father Christmas would write a letter to the children um what I find fascinating about this is you see all sorts of Tolkien skills coming into it his skills as a calligrapher his skills as a artist his humour um he had quite a broad sense of humour some people found it bit irritating but actually it really suits the kids sense of humour people falling down and you know having accidents and all that kind of thing but as you read it what is really interesting is how it gets more and more complicated in the various worlds that are breaking into the sort of you know father Christmas's workshop and there's a in the middle of the 30s because each letter is um dated there's a big battle with the goblins it's almost as if Tolkien cannot help himself he has to go there and then the latter part the um some of the letters are actually from the chief elf who's called Ilbereth yeah so it gets very Tolkien-esque towards you and you'll be pleased um there was a rather splendid picture here of um uh the polar bear in his bath oh I remember that my mother got that and started reading them to us and and sending we were quite old about him but you know um and uh sent one and the polar bear in his bath was a great favourite you know how seldom yes I think what polar bear generally is a character he is absolutely he's the strongest one of all of them and you get his um you get his runes at the end and his real name so do read on to the end but I think what's quite poignant I'd love to see an adaptation of this Tolkien and state if you're listening let's let someone do this um I'd love to see an adaptation of this where it ends where it ends because it ends in 1939 and there's this very um it's sort of mournful but poignant feeling of what happens at the end of Christmas and I think captures that mood really well um and he's telling that his children what's happening in the world fire his own story of Father Christmas um saying I expect to remember that some years ago we had trouble with the goblins and we thought we had settled it well it broke out again this autumn worse than his been for centuries and that's the last Father Christmas letter um so poignant so he was so good with those you know because he used to he used to um you know put the envelopes and make the lovely stamps and then all the polar everything and eventually he he recruited the postman and got the postman actually to deliver the letters in person to the children genuinely from the proper postbag which might be for some you know so in the last section of that um of what we're talking about today I want to have a brief look at how Christmas appears in fantasy but also what we've done as writers with Christmas and the or the holiday season shall we say and I was thinking about just a very quick look at the famous Christmas stories aside from the Christian narratives that appear on our screens every year loads of them are fantasy you mentioned the Christmas ghost story well of course up there is the Christmas Carol yeah yeah I try and read that every year it's absolutely my favourite because it captures the heart of that sort of sense of redemption and um the generosity but also you also mentioned the snow queen which again has not only the snowy landscapes but the idea of heart melting literally the heart melting the shard of ice melting um and then of course the nutcracker I've done an adaptation for kids of the nutcracker for um an educational reader and for that I went back to the original Hoffman tale which is much more interesting than the ballet the ballet kind of any does a tiny fragment of the story but the the thing about the Hoffman tale is the it's exactly Lucy's dilemma that she has when she comes back from the wardrobe no one believes her and the nutcracker encapsulates that uh the same within that story the fact that no one believes the heroine that she's had all these adventures so it's really worth going back to the original nutcracker tale as well as going to the ballet which you know as a another pleasure I'm sure but do you have any favourite Christmas stories that we haven't yet mentioned particularly those of a fantasy um genre that you bring out every year well um the box of delights is my absolute must have must must must read again um book of Christmas um and of course it's just I mean no sure most people who who listen to this will who are listening to this will actually have come across it if not the book itself for the BBC adaptation which is which is delightful um but there's Lucy Boston's the children of green no which oh yes yeah which is for anybody who doesn't know is it's about an imaginative little boy called tolly who goes to say with his grandmother in a house in the fenns or near the fenns who makes playfellows out of the ghosts of the children who used to live there this is based on the man the manner at Henningford Gray was Lucy Boston's own house a marvelous place and of course as Christmas approaches it just gets more and more and more Christmassy but also with the assistance of his his very benign little ghostly playfellows he they have to encounter the demon utri in the garden so there's darkness as well I always loved that book I can't just to just to pick up in case people haven't come across the box of delights particularly if you're um watching from America it's by a writer called John Maysfield and it was originally published in 1935 so it's you know he's a contemporary or just a little bit before in a sense um and yeah and a bit like the the green no stories you mentioned the box of delight definitely has the darkness as well as the light it's a battle between the two absolutely so does the gospel I think seems to me especially in Matthew you know the point about the light in Christmas is that it's surrounded by darkness just as the point about the warmth and the coziness and the feasting and the rich fruit it's because it's cold and snowy outside yeah so if you just do something which is nothing but fluffy niceness it'll go no way you know there has to be danger yes there has to be a resistance to the darkness all the best Christmas stories have got that yes yes I agree I think that's it the green note I just to say the green no stories are are absolutely fabulous that's stunning I absolutely stunning yeah I had a wonderful adventure in relation to them in that um when I became and I came you know I I was an English teacher for a while as my my first job and I happened to be teaching in St Ives near Huntington not far from Hemingford Gray where the house is but I knew nothing of that I had read the the the the the the green no stories at the same time that I read the nanny ones and therefore it was all in the same world and I was talking to our head of the English department there and saying you know I want to do the children of green known he said oh well you want to go go over and um go over to the house then and have a word with Lucy Buston I can give you an introduction and he might as well have said by the way the wardrobe is in my it was exactly and that's so I did and um I was just thrilled um because the house is just as it and Peter Buston's lovely drawings and Lucy Buston was exactly as I'd imagined Mrs. Oldman and in fact I'm very by great good fortune came to know her quite well and at one point um she she asked me if I would stay there for a while and be here in Manuensis she was writing um poetry about a wonderful poetry at that time but I just got engaged to Maddie and we were we were being engaged made we were about to get married so I I said to her my my my my day you have a rival and she's 90 uh you know I've frozen I don't know if um oh yeah you're still getting welcomed don't worry okay so she's anyway so so Maggie came over and met her and we had a lovely time walking in the rose garden how wonderful yeah I regard her as one of the great writers yeah she she's a marvellous writing absolutely marvellous um but I have a couple more so this is um Liam Garfield's response to the Christmas Carol Mr. Colbert's ghost and it's well worth reading I think and um can I go on I've got yeah well yeah because I think we should always leave people with the reading list okay absolutely this is very new Catherine Christian Catherine fishes the clockwork crow is absolutely enchanting there are two sequels and it follows the adventures of a little girl a Victorian orphan who takes winter train ride to an old Welsh mansion where she has to outwit the dangerous Welsh fairies the tulith tag um that's how you pronounce them with the aid of the clockwork crow and I highly recommend them I think it's always good to remember that we don't stop with talking in Lewis we're going on to look at you writing just to um we're going to hop into Harry Potter just briefly because of course I think there is a big strong association still with Harry Potter and Christmas thanks to the fact that the uh JK Rowling does a school year and school year in features Christmas heavily so of course you've got all the images and I think her use of it shows the side that you either do the full-on celebration but you also use it to contrast the loneliness of the character and that I think works particularly well with Harry when he's outside of that's the bit which I think is most poignant and when he's outside of everybody else's celebration so if you're thinking about using it if anyone's listening to this and is um doing a fantasy world where Christmas fits that's a really good use of it is to do that yes absolutely welcome and Catherine I'm now going to put you on the spot as writers to find out um well A you could recommend one of your books as a Christmas present if you want half I think you should definitely do that but Malcolm you've written a whole advent book which I actually spent one advent doing I think last year uh so please tell us about that yeah so this is uh called um waiting on the word a poem a day for advent Christmas in epiphany and it's an anthology I mean it's mostly classic poems and it has one to my enemies but what I do is I give you the poem but then I write a very short reflective essay I find that people find it quite helpful to have something opened out for them and I try and take the sort of advent journey which in a sense of course starts really once thinking of the advent of Christ Christmas I mean there are other senses of advent too but if we're once thinking of the advent of Christ Christmas it has to start with the annunciation really and Mary's various preparations so I have some annunciation I have the the great Milton poem in there that I that that that Lewis Marif done so much I have my own sequence um of seven poems on the great advent antiphon to the seven great o's which I love which are these kind of mystical titles of Christ um I have a poem of my own about about Christmas day and so on in it um but I then go on into uh into epiphany and uh you know take the story forward and I would have poem about the wise men coming um and I sometimes chairs and secular poems as well not just don't do directly religious ones that are I think observations of the season that just enter into the spirits of the whole thing there's a wonderful poem by the contemporary poet gravel end up about watching moons change in the in the winter sky and and wanting to give each of these moons in their different phases to his wife you know and that you know having to sort of give her the poem with the moons in them instead um so yeah I really enjoy doing it and it seems to sort of continue to kind of live a life of its own I'd also give me a chance to to bring in some poets who I think have been unjustly neglected I don't think I've got a couple of poems in here by Ruth Pitter who I think is a really fine poet uh was much admired by Lewis um it's a beautiful poem affair's mystical poem called a bird in the tree I've got here um so yeah it was very good good good fun to put together and um it seems to sort of have carried on with the life of its own and I what I did for people who enjoy reading it but would like to hear the poems that I had people have sometimes said to me it's nice if I read the poems so I have recorded all these poems and on my blog over the advent season in a sort of weekly post I post up the recordings of all that week's poems and the texts of them so people who are reading the book can sort of press up and then hear me recite the poem which sometimes happens it out of it okay well put a link to that in the show notes as they call it on these things um so people can find those cast now I've got your book here I'm gonna bring it in there we go um so this is a very good present for anybody who is remembering their childhood and their reading of um the Narnia stories in particular tell us a little bit about this and what what you cover well um so because I was so um so so passionate about the Narnia books and I was a little girl um I well I came to the end of them and I'm sure many of the children did this too um I wrote a book of my own stories about Narnia I was 9 10 that sort of age and that sort of got me writing that got me writing seriously I never really stopped writing after that I just carried on writing books I mean loads of unpublished manuscripts upstairs unpublished and unpublishable I should say um so Spareum has called what my own copy brought it's I think this may be back to front but it says from Spareum to Wardrobe travels in Narnia with my 9-year-old self um and um it's it's sort of productive of the gift of the silver chair that my mother gave me so long ago I suppose um so I looked at my I sort of explored my own childhood memories of reading the book which I remember very very clearly rather as Malcolm can often quite exactly where I was and what I was doing when I was reading the books for the first time but also I thought I'd would be interesting to sort of have a dialogue between myself as a child and myself now um and as an adult sort of tease out some of the threads from the extraordinarily rich tapestry of references that there was weaves into those books which we have touched upon I mean not just from Christianity but also from Plato Greek mythology fairy tales medieval literature Bunyan Milton you know George MacDonald you name it it just goes on and on and on and I I find that fascinating and um I think the book is reasonably readable so that's that's that's my most recent book um as far as myself as a as a novelist goes um this is a few years old now but it's called Dark Angels it was published by Harper Collins and it's a middle grade book for children and um do I it's it's basically it's a Christmas it's a Christmasly book it's it's called The Shadow Hunt in the United States um it's a winter book set set in the Welsh marches in the late 12th century and it begins in autumn and comes to Christmas climax of Snow, Danger, Ghost, Devils, Elves and Angels so have I got time to read a tiny bit yeah the beauty of this kind of format is that we don't have to cut to a commercial break or anything okay you can just kick in there's a bit um towards the end it's not the end you can see uh where my two characters there's a boy called Wolf and a girl called Nest and um for various reasons they've agreed to meet on the top of the tower of the Motton Bailey Castle Lamott Rouge which is where they both are living at the moment on Christmas morning because they've been told that if you go there on Christmas morning at sunrise you might be able to see the angels dancing in the sun so this is a bit where it goes a wolf sweat snow from the rail they leaned on it looking east every moment the colour in the sky grew stronger a vast cloud stood high over crow moor it flushed rows and peach and gold and began to brighten beyond colour into pure light out of nowhere a small wind ruffled their faces Christ does not assess Christ is born far below their feet a crock a cock crowed wild and shrill a goblet of fire two brights to look at rows over the rim of the world fields and woods leaped to life rays of light struck across the valley and the snow-crusted edge of the rail where they leaned turned all to diamonds a lump came into wolf's throat poised here on the tower high above the world his hard decisions and troubles seemed tiny and unimportant nest grabbed his hand oh wolf she breathed look above the joyful blazing disc of the sun the sky was like hammered silver white sparks appeared in it like morning stars wolf squinted between the bars of his fingers far far away leaving streaks and curls of fire the angels danced like a flock of birds before the sun that immeasurably distant winds flashing so that's a christmas lovely thank you so I suppose I should now say now it's like completely different because I was thinking I don't have a christmas book and I realized I actually do oh good um one of my I write under three names and one of them is jost sterling and also published by Harper Collins I have a murder mystery at christmas is that is that traditional and it's actually inspired by the area in which Tolkien's house is actually situated even though we didn't manage to get the house I'm fascinated by that area and or the arrival of particularly Russian oligarchs buying up the property around there which is partly why it was so expensive and I think maybe it was me working things through um I've written a murder mystery set in houses around there but the presiding fantasy genius is actually Alice in Wonderland um the connection being to Lewis Carroll uh and in fact that's how you solve the puzzle is knowing what happens in what order in Alice in Wonderland so that's called Red House but there are dead bodies so um it's you know it's an adult novel rather than a christmas family read thank you so much Malcolm and Catherine for um doing this chat with us today I have really learned a lot and I've thoroughly enjoyed talking to you about always winter and never christmas because I think we've actually tippled over from the always winter into christmas and the crocuses I like your word I like your word tipple there you have a season you tipped over it but if it's christmas you should definitely tipple definitely yes so thank you very much and it was very kind for you to give us all this time so thank you and goodbye thank you for enjoying thank you very much we've enjoyed it I certainly have yes I have to thank you