Dr Chris Deacy, Reader in Theology and Religious Studies in the Department of Religious Studies, has just published a new book Christmas as Religion: Rethinking Santa, the Secular, and the Sacred (Oxford University Press, 2016).
The book provides a new take on established literature on the relationship between Christmas and religion, including a revisiting of the way such theorists as Émile Durkheim and Mircea Eliade have understood the location of the sacred-profane interface.
In the book, Chris argues that we need to move away from conventional binary language in order to develop a more sophisticated and realistic understanding of where religion can be encountered, and it draws on the category of Implicit Religion – the notion that religion can be found in secular life – to achieve this reconceptualization.
The work offers critical discussion of the relationship between Jesus and Santa where it is argued that it is their separation from one another which, paradoxically, makes them complementary figures who exist independently yet without conflict as no one (including Christians) has to choose between them.
For full details of the book, please see the publisher’s page here:
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/christmas-as-religion-9780198754565?cc=gb&lang=en&