Loving praise for
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charity.
2. By the conversion or sanctification of family life we must be careful to mean something more than the preservation of "love" in the sense of natural affection. Love (in that sense) is not enough. Affection, as distinct from charity, is not a cause of lasting happiness. Left to its natural bent affection becomes in the end greedy, naggingly solicitous, jealous, exacting, ti-
4"The abuse does not abolish the use."
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morous. It suffers agony when its object is absent-but is not repaid by any long enjoyment when the object is present. Even at the vicar's lunch table affection was partly the cause of the quarrel. That son would have borne patiently and humorously from any other old man the silliness which enraged him in his father. It is because he still (in some fashion) "cares" that he is impatient. The vicar's wife would not be quite that endless whimper of self-pity which she now is if she did not (in a sense) "love" the family: the continued disappointment of her continued and ruthless demand for sympathy, for affection, for appreciation has helped to make her what she is. I do not think this aspect of affection is nearly enough noticed by most popular moralists. The greed to be loved is a fearful thing. Some of those who say (and almost with pride) that they live only for love come, at last, to live in incessant resentment.
3. We must realize the yawning pitfall in that very characteristic of home life which is so often glibly paraded as its principal attraction. "It is there that we appear as we really are: it is there that we can fling aside the disguises and be ourselves." These words, in the vicar's mouth, were only too true and he showed at the lunch table what they meant. Outside his own house he behaves with ordinary courtesy. He would not have interrupted any other young man as he interrupted his son. He would not, in any other society, have talked confident nonsense about subjects of which he was totally ignorant: or, if he had, he would have accepted correction with good temper. In fact, he values home as the place where he can "be himself" in the sense of trampling on all the restraints which civilized humanity has found indispensable for tolerable social intercourse. And this, I think, is very common. What chiefly distinguishes domestic from public conversation is surely very often simply its downright rudeness. What distinguishes domestic behavior is often its selfishness, slovenliness, incivility-even brutality. And it will often happen that those who praise home life most loudly are the worst offenders in this respect: they praise it- they are always glad to get home, hate the outer world, can't stand visitors, can't be bothered meeting people, etc.-because the freedoms in which they indulge themselves at home have ended by making them unfit for civilized society. If they practiced elsewhere the only behavior they now find "natural" they would simply be knocked down.
4. How, then, are people to behave at home? If a man can't be comfortable and unguarded, can't take his ease and "be
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himself" in his own house, where can he? That is, I confess, the trouble. The answer is an alarming one. There is nowhere this side of heaven where one can safely lay the reins on the horse's neck. It will never be lawful simply to "be ourselves" until "ourselves" have become sons of God. It is all there in the hymn-"Christian, seek not yet repose." This does not mean, of course, that there is no difference between home life and general society. It does mean that home life has its own rule of courtesy-a code more intimate, more subtle, more sensitive, and, therefore, in some ways more difficult, than that of the outer world.
5. Finally, must we not teach that if the home is to be a means of grace it must be a place of rules? There cannot be a common life without a regula. The alternative to rule is not freedom but the unconstitutional (and often unconscious) tyranny of the most selfish member.
In a word, must we not either cease to preach domesticity or else begin to preach it seriously? Must we not abandon sentimental eulogies and begin to give practical advice on the high, hard, lovely, and adventurous art of really creating the Christian family?
26.
WHAT CHRISTMAS MEANS TO ME
THREE THINGS GO BY THE NAME OF CHRISTMAS. ONE IS A
religious festival. This is important and obligatory for Christians; but as it can be of no interest to anyone else, I shall naturally say no more about it here. The second (it has complex historical connections with the first, but we needn't go into them) is a popular holiday, an occasion for merrymaking and hospitality. If it were my business to have a "view" on this, I should say that I much approve of merrymaking. But what I approve of much more is everybody minding his own business. I see no reason why I should volunteer views as to how other people should spend their own money in their own leisure among their own friends. It is highly probable that they want my advice on such matters as little as I want theirs. But the third thing called Christmas is unfortunately everyone's business.
I mean of course the commercial racket. The interchange of presents was a very small ingredient in the older English festivity. Mr. Pickwick took a cod with him to Dingley Dell; the reformed Scrooge ordered a turkey for his clerk; lovers sent love gifts; toys and fruit were given to children. But the idea that not only all friends but even all acquaintances should give one another presents, or at least send one another cards, is quite modern and has been forced upon us by the shopkeepers. Neither of these circumstances is in itself a reason for condemning it. I condemn it on the following grounds.
1. It gives on the whole much more pain than pleasure. You have only to stay over Christmas with a family who seriously try to "keep" it (in its third, or commercial, aspect) in order to see that the thing is a nightmare. Long before December 25, everyone is worn out-physically worn out by weeks of daily struggle in overcrowded shops, mentally worn out by the effort to remember all the right recipients and to think out suitable
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gifts for them. They are in no trim for merrymaking; much less (if they should want to) to take part in a religious act. They look far more as if there had been a long illness in the house.
2. Most of it is involuntary. The modern rule is that anyone can force you to give him a present by sending you a quite unprovoked present of his own. It is almost a blackmail. Who has not heard the wail of despair, and indeed of resentment, when, at the last moment, just as everyone hoped that the nuisance was over for one more year, the unwanted gift from Mrs. Busy (whom we hardly remember) flops unwelcomed through the letter box, and back to the dreadful shops one of us has to go?
3. Things are given as presents which no mortal ever bought for himself-gaudy and useless gadgets, "novelties" because no one was ever fool enough to make their like before. Have we really no better use for materials and for human skill and time than to spend them on all this rubbish?
4. The nuisance. For after all, during the racket we still have all our ordinary and necessary shopping to do, and the racket trebles the labor of it.
We are told that the whole dreary business must go on because it is good for trade. It is in fact merely one annual symptom of that lunatic condition of our country, and indeed of the world, in which everyone lives by persuading everyone else to buy things. I don't know the way out. But can it really be my duty to buy and receive masses of junk every winter just to help the shopkeepers? If the worst comes to the worst I'd sooner give them money for nothing and write it off as a charity. For nothing? Why, better for nothing than for a nuisance.
Also available... the complete edition of
GOD IN THE DOCK
Essays on Theology and Ethics
by C. S. Lewis
Edited by Walter Hooper
Published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 255 Jefferson Ave., S.E. Grand Rapids, Michigan 49503
From The New York Times Book Review... "The searching mind and the poetic spirit of C. S. Lewis are readily evident in this collection of essays edited by his one-time secretary, Walter Hooper. Here the reader finds the tough-minded polemicist relishing the debate; here too the kindly teacher explaining a complex abstraction by means of clarifying analogies; here the publi
c speaker addressing his varied audience with all the humility and grace of a man who knows how much more remains to be unknown."
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
C S. LEWIS, a contemporary and friend of J. R. R. Tolkien, has emerged as the twentieth century's greatest apologist for the Christian faith. Since his death on the day of John F. Kennedy's assassination, November 22, 1963, his popularity has been constantly on the rise. He is best known for his children's fantasy series The Chronicles of Narnia, his science-fiction trilogy Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, That Hideous Strength, his theology work Mere Christianity, and his delightful allegory Screwtape Letters. The Grand Miracle is a collection of some of his finest essays, which should be a welcome addition to anyone's shelf of C. S. Lewis literature.