Dr Chris Deacy, Head of Department of Religious Studies and Reader in Theology and Religious Studies, considers how nostagia plays a role in our view of Christmas and a hopeful take on our future celebrations.
What does Christmas mean for us since 2016?
We know that nostalgia plays a prominent role in the way we categorize and reflect on the Christmas festival. We are susceptible to romanticizing this time of year, feeling sentimental for halcyon days gone by, perhaps thinking that the past was better than the present and that we may never return to that glorious period.
This understanding of Christmas gives the notion that our childhood Christmas might represent something pure and unsullied whereas the present is characterized by a sense of loss and displacement from those better times.
Since I wrote Rethinking Santa in 2016, a new set of parameters have emerged which we did not anticipate. Brexit, Trump, Covid, Black Lives Matter, #MeToo – these were not on our radars at the time, yet each of them entails a perspective on the past in which we may feel a sense of unease and estrangement, from the present and the past.
I wrote in 2016 that Christmas is a time for feeling nostalgic for the good times past when times were simpler and more ‘authentic’, but as I acknowledged, this may have been a Christmas of the imagination rather than one that historically existed.
Recent movements and events have polarized us. Some see Brexit as a positive force in which we are emancipated from the past shackles to the EU, whilst others fear a reactionary throwback to a past of intolerance, racism and xenophobia as a part of our political and social currency.
BLM and #MeToo also force those in situations of privilege to ask whether the past that we celebrate was as rosy as once thought, and where not everyone had a childhood that was plentiful, happy and hopeful.
No one who has been in an abusive relationship or suffered traumatic power relations will look back on Christmas uncritically. Yet, Christmas can be a positive force for everyone as we are afforded the chance to reflect upon that very discordance between the ideal past or present and the actuality.
Christmas can also be a time for renewal in which we are prepared to entertain the possibility of distancing ourselves from the traditions and rituals that we take for granted, and perhaps reinventing or reframing them. We had little choice in 2020 when so much of the world was plunged into lockdown.
Just as we embrace the supernatural at Christmas – the classic movies being filled with magical elves, Father Christmas and flying reindeer which do not conform to our secular dispositions the rest of the year – so we might be afforded at Christmas the chance to imagine not (just) a recreation of a faux magical past, but a future refusing subservience to oppression.
We see this reflected in how the festive season inspires action, engagement and community – ‘other-centred’ activities against the notion that idea that money reigns supreme and instead where, as in Miracle on 34th Street and Elf, the formation of a family unit, the reconciliation of an estranged loved one and a community united in the Christmas spirit, are of paramount focus.
Christmas in 2021 will hopefully be one where we can be with our loved ones once more. Even if we cannot look back to a Christmas that never was, we can be inspired, like the characters in our seasons movies, to imagine a future where generosity, wonder, miracles, joy, belief, fellowship, giving, celebration, community, family, love and even redemption can happen.
Christmas may be heavily nostalgia-focused, but let’s use this to cultivate a set of traditions for the ‘Christmas yet to come’. This should be a Christmas which accommodates everyone and which is a beholden to a different paradigm – one in which we reframe the images of the past and enter into a new, inclusive dialogue with the future.
Make sure to check out Dr Chris Deacy podcast: Nostalgia Interviews which accompanies the work he is doing on Nostalgia at Kent.