Tolkien was a firm believer in the importance of believable, consistent secondary world creation, and the appearance of a Christian saint in a world dominated by characters from Greco-Roman and Norse pagan mythologies seems rather strange. Other scholars have doubted whether this in particular was the cause of Tolkien’s dislike, but it’s easy to see why it seems a likely factor. Too many different things all jumbled up together. Carpenter particularly singles out the combination of Father Christmas-a mythologized Christian saint-with Greco-Roman fauns and nymphs, and talking animals, as one of Tolkien’s main issues with the stories.

Lewis’ biographer George Sayer and Tolkien’s biographer Humphrey Carpenter both suggest that one of the reasons for this was the mixing of mythologies in the Chronicles. Tolkien famously disliked the Narnia Chronicles, as he told David Kolb in a letter.

In that fantasy epic, the first major sign that the White Witch’s eternal winter is fading is the appearance of Father Christmas (aka Santa Claus), who has been kept out of Narnia ever since the Witch arrived.įather Christmas gives three of the four child protagonists magical gifts that are both far more impressive and far more dangerous than most children expect to find waiting for them on Christmas morning, and these gifts play important roles in the story, not only in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but in its sequel Prince Caspian as well. We have never seen a screen version of Prince Caspian, for example, in which young children Susan and Lucy go around cavorting with Bacchus, the god of wine, and his wild Bacchants, for the very good reason that it comes across as seriously strange and more than a little disturbing.īut the oddest moment in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Lewis’ first written The Chronicles of Narnia novel and the most often adapted, cannot be so easily lifted out. Lewis for the screen will find they have a few odd things to contend with.

Tolkien father christmas