The White Witch's Holiday Gift Guide

Today it snowed in Minneapolis. This, to anyone who knows approximately one fact about Minnesota, is not surprising and doesn’t deserve an announcement. But it was the first significant snow, a Christmas season snow, the kind that does more than soak your socks and coat the roads with slush.

It takes you to Narnia.

Or, at least, it did for me. But then, I’m in Narnia probably half of the time anyway. Even just on this blog, I’ve written about Edmund and Star Wars Mafia, Cair Paravel and heaven, Susan and death, and always winter, never Christmas.

Nearly every time I play hide-and-seek or push aside coats in a closet, I feel around for pine needles. I’m almost ashamed about how excited I got the day in C.S. Lewis class (yes, it’s a class) when we ate Turkish Delight. And one year, when I had to pick up two boxes from the post office and it was snowing, I brought an umbrella along and paused under a lamppost for a while, hoping that someone would come by, recognize the allusion, and be suitably impressed. No one did. It was quite disappointing.

But tonight I was curled up in my armchair, looking out at the snow, and I remembered Father Christmas.

It’s kind of a random little incident in the middle of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. The Beavers and the Pevensies (sans Edmund) are on the run from the White Witch, when all of a sudden they hear jingle bells. But the sleigh doesn’t belong to the dreaded Ice Queen, but to Father Christmas himself!

Rereading Cair Paravel

I have a confession: I never really read the ending of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

Don’t get me wrong…I sort of read it. But, after the final battle scene, who really follows the last few pages that carefully anyway? The rest of the book is just laughing at the four siblings because they start to talk funny and skimming their culture shock when they come out of the wardrobe.

Because of this, I missed—well, a lot of things, probably, but one section in particular that stood out to me this time around:

“The castle of Cair Paravel on its little hill towered up above them all; before them were the sands, with rocks and little pools of salt water, and seaweed, and the smell of the sea and long miles of bluish-green waves breaking for ever and ever on the beach. And oh, the cry of the seagulls! Have you heard it? Can you remember?”

And you can find it there, in those words—the longing of a grown man who can still hear the echoes of seagulls from a childhood holiday. Maybe the castle there was listing to one side, the foundation a crumbling mess, all ready to be swept away by the tide in a few short hours.

But it was Cair Paravel, just for a moment, because he was young enough to truly believe that all was right with the world.

I don’t have strong positive memories of the seaside, but I have others: brief snapshots of joy where for once I wasn’t afraid or tired or angry or vaguely disappointed with the way this world has turned out. Times when I was safe and warm and loved, and that’s all I felt, for just a little while.

Those are the moments when we are quite sure that Aslan has won and we are kings and queens, moments when we look out over the sea and it is beautiful.

Sometimes we forget to enjoy those moments. Other times, we forget to remember them. Not in a way that makes us live constantly, miserably in the past. But as an act of faith, as a way of saying, “I believe we’ll make it to Cair Paravel again someday.”

The scene is not always a coronation; the sound is not always seagulls. It’s the second chorus of “Silent Night” sung in the glow of candles. It’s in the rousing finale of a Broadway show that reminded you that “to love another person is to see the face of God.” It’s the quiet snoring of someone you love. It’s children’s laughter and guitar solos and conversation over coffee and film credits and windchimes in the garden.

It’s in the sound of church bells, but also in every sound, every memory that reminds us of our true home, someplace where we can be children again, safe and triumphant at last.

Have you heard it? Do you remember?

Sabbath Reflections: Reflections on the Death of Aslan

If I’m still in an Easter mood, I blame it on Narnia. I went to see a musical production of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe last night at a local high school.

Now, I have to preface this with the fact that I’ve never liked Susan. She’s always too darn practical. (For fans of the series, this led to a smug, “I knew it!” in The Last Battle which I immediately felt guilty about.)

Anyway, the Susan in the musical was just like that. In the sister’s song right after Aslan’s death, this is what she sings, “Little sister, no more tears / Though the night is long and dark / Still the dawn appears. / Dearest Lucy, dry your eyes. / Yes, the dawn is cold and gray. / Still the sun will rise.”

I get the point. Really, I do. This was supposed to be a sweet and touching moment of the play. But it just made me angry. I wanted to yell, “Let Lucy cry!” Susan has the annoying habit of wanting to make everything reasonable.

Always Winter, Never Christmas

One of the worst realities I can think of is the setting of C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe: always winter, but never Christmas.

When I first read the book as an eight-year-old, I thought immediately about the fact that Mr. Tumnus and the beavers never had presents or carols or a Christmas trees with those bulbs that make your nose look big when you hold them up to your face.

But the Narnians needed more than the outward trappings of the holidays. They were longing for things that they could hardly remember, but that they somehow knew were missing: hope, joy, and peace.

Like Narnia, our world was once frozen in always winter, never Christmas. But then, two things happened.