{"id":6834,"date":"2016-12-21T11:12:44","date_gmt":"2016-12-21T11:12:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/?p=6834"},"modified":"2016-12-21T11:16:54","modified_gmt":"2016-12-21T11:16:54","slug":"chris-deacy-on-the-spiritual-side-of-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/2016\/12\/21\/chris-deacy-on-the-spiritual-side-of-christmas\/","title":{"rendered":"Chris Deacy on the spiritual side of Christmas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.kent.ac.uk\/secl\/thrs\/staff\/deacy.html\">Dr Chris Deacy<\/a>, Reader in Theology and Religious Studies in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kent.ac.uk\/secl\/thrs\/index.html\">Department of Religious Studies<\/a>, has just published an article on the complex meanings of Christmas for <a href=\"http:\/\/theconversation.com\/uk\">The Conversation<\/a> website, entitled \u2018You May Not Believe in Christmas But Once a Year, We All Get a Touch of its\u00a0Magic\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>In the article, he argues that, in spite of the increased commercialisation and disconnection with its religious origins, we cannot help but be touched by some of spiritual overtones of Christmas. \u2018We may scoff at the stock conventions of Christmas, \u2018he says, \u2018the elves, the reindeer, Lapland, Frosty the Snowman, Santa, and the fairy at the top of the tree, but they represent models of joy, peace, love and hope which (against our rational judgement) rub off on us.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>To read the full article, please see The Conversation webpage here:<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/theconversation.com\/you-may-not-believe-in-christmas-but-once-a-year-we-all-get-a-touch-of-its-magic-69737\">http:\/\/theconversation.com\/you-may-not-believe-in-christmas-but-once-a-year-we-all-get-a-touch-of-its-magic-69737<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dr Chris Deacy, Reader in Theology and Religious Studies in the Department of Religious Studies, has just published an article on the complex meanings of &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/2016\/12\/21\/chris-deacy-on-the-spiritual-side-of-christmas\/\">Read&nbsp;more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2458,"featured_media":3455,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[124,18581],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6834"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2458"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6834"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6834\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6836,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6834\/revisions\/6836"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}