Christmas Cookies and Jollification

In my last column, I mentioned that a group of Wyoming Catholic College students would be gathering at our home for “Linguini and Lewis.” The pasta was delicious and the conversation about C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe fascinating as we worked out why Lewis included references to Christmas and why Father Christmas (Santa Clause) as a key character.

It’s a puzzle because, of course, Christ was never born of Mary in Narnia. And it’s even more of a puzzle because of Lewis’s Scrooge-like attitude toward Christmas. “I feel exactly as you do about the horrid commercial racket they have made out of Christmas,” he wrote to a friend. “I send no cards and give no presents except to children.” Writing to the same friend years later he called Christmas “a sort of nightmare” and contrasted “all this ghastly ‘Xmas’ racket” with “our feast of the Nativity.”

It seems to me that Santa stands as an icon at the heart of the racket. Yet there he is in Narnia. Why?

The first hint is early in the book when the faun, Mr. Tumnus, remembers the good days in Narnia before the rise of the White Witch and endless winter. He recalls summer, when “the streams would run with wine instead of water and the whole forest would give itself up to jollification for weeks on end.”

“Jollification.” I didn’t know that was a word. Did you? Maybe we didn’t know because we suffer a jollification deficiency?

Jovial and Jocular

In The Narnia Code, Michael Ward explains that the seven Narnia books correspond to the seven planets of the Medieval solar system, and Lewis infused The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe with the spirit and mythology of Jupiter. Jupiter was the king of the Roman gods, and so the book focuses on kingship. Not only that, but Jupiter — also called Jove — was the source of joy and happiness. His name is the source of our word “jovial.”

Thus, Ward writes,

Father Christmas, red-faced, loud-voiced, and jolly is the nearest thing we still have to the Jovial personality in our popular modern culture. That’s why Lewis included him in this book.

Santa is more than the icon of “the ‘Xmas’ racket”; he’s the icon of the jovial jollification a merry Christmas implies. That is, he’s the icon of all that has been squeezed out of our lives and culture.

We are a dull, unjovial lot, aren’t we? In fact, we’ve become downright grim. We don’t laugh anymore. Afraid of getting canceled and ostracized, we’re too scared to laugh at or even with others. And, partly for that reason, partly for others, we’re too horribly serious and stressed to laugh at ourselves — something that would do us a world of good.

The Stress Connection

So is it any wonder that Gallup reported this past April that “nearly half of all Americans, 49%, report frequently experiencing stress, up 16 points over the past two decades and the highest in Gallup’s trend to date”?

Add this from the Surgeon General’s 2023 advisory, “Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation”: “Approximately half of U.S. adults report experiencing loneliness, with some of the highest rates among young people.”

We may remember, like Mr. Tumnus, the years long ago we gave ourselves up to jollification, but in the chilly, short days of December 2024, worries abound, hope seems elusive, and tensions are high even with friends (assuming we have any) and family.

While prayer and the worship life of the Church are central to our battles with loneliness, isolation, stress, and anxiety, decking the halls with boughs of holly, baking cookies, and singing songs like “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” “White Christmas,” and “The Christmas Song” (“Chestnuts roasting”) are part of the solution as well.

So don’t just “be good for goodness’s sake,” be jolly for goodness’s sake. It will improve your mental health, your physical health, your marriage, family, friendships, and work life. You may arouse suspicions by smiling and laughing, but so what? We’re Christians. We have a lot to smile and laugh about, not the least of which is our silly, serious selves.

“We need a little Christmas.” So bake some cookies, watch Elf, get to a Christmas service, and heed Frank Sinatra’s good advice: “Have yourself a merry little Christmas. Let your heart be light.” Oh, and pick up the phone or, better yet, walk next door to pass it on. Make jollification a habit.

James Tonkowich is a freelance writer, speaker, and commentator on spirituality, religion, and public life. He is the author of The Liberty Threat: The Attack on Religious Freedom in America Today and Pears, Grapes, and Dates: A Good Life After Mid-Life and serves as director of distance learning at Wyoming Catholic College. He also hosts the college’s weekly podcast, The After Dinner Scholar.