*** DEBUG START ***
*** DEBUG END ***

Spotlight on Santa

03 January 2014

iStock

IT IS not just the shops that cash in on Christmas. Judging by the Christmas Day edition of Thinking Allowed (Radio 4), the festive season provides plenty of opportunities for sociological research, and journal papers loaded with that all-important academic quality, "impact".

Professor Philip Hancock has written a piece for the Journal of Work, Employment and Society, "Being Santa Claus" - a study of the socio-economic activities that go into constructing our experience of Christmas. In other words, why do grown men dress up in Santa outfits for hours on end to be ill-treated by children and parents?

There are many similarities between the working conditions of the average Santa, and the sorts of employees that you would expect a sociologist to study - assembly-line workers, call-centre operators, and the like. They are often under time pressures: one reported having to get through 100 children in an hour. Yet Santas report a feeling of worthiness, even self-identification with their avatar. "When I put on the suit," another reported, "I am a different person."

Laurie Taylor's second guest in this programme brought sociological discourse into the home. For who among us has not undergone the process, described by Professor Jennifer Mason, of invoking and revising Christmas traditions, year after year? It happens most obviously when new couples negotiate their traditions for the first time.

Are you used to waiting until the dishes are washed before touching those presents, or were you tearing at the wrapping paper at 7 a.m.? We read moral implications into this, and many other Christmas traditions: as you see the woman to whom you have pledged your life ripping at the Sellotape with her teeth, heedless of the fact that you have not completed the packaging on your own present, you cannot help wondering if this is not a revelation of some deep-seated moral flaw; while she sees your puritannical self-possession as a sign of control-freakery.

What rituals we establish for our children demonstrate perfectly, Professor Mason says, the "lived experience of tradition", combining elements of childhood memory and myth, moral obligation, and customised quirkiness.

The other piece of radio that really got under the skin last week was the Christmas Day episode of Belief, Radio 3's series of interviews with Joan Bakewell, which have always been a hit-and-miss affair. The trouble has often been that the guests are not used to expressing matters of faith. This was not the case with the actor and comedian Sally Phillips, however, who gave the most insightful and moving account of a religious conscience that I have heard for a long time.

There is something Pauline about her conversion: an obsessive atheist, she experienced a sudden conversion in a supermarket, thanks to the prayers of an actor friend. But she acknowledges that being a Christian will never, and indeed should never, be cool.

But it was with her first child, born with Down syndrome, that her most profound revelation came: a child who brings out in people their better selves and a vision of, as Phillips beautifully described it, "the topsy-turvy" Kingdom of heaven.

Browse Church and Charity jobs on the Church Times jobsite

Church Times Bookshop

Save money on books reviewed or featured in the Church Times. To get your reader discount:

> Click on the “Church Times Bookshop” link at the end of the review.

> Call 0845 017 6965 (Mon-Fri, 9.30am-5pm).

The reader discount is valid for two months after the review publication date. E&OE

Forthcoming Events

Women Mystics: Female Theologians through Christian History

13 January - 19 May 2025

An online evening lecture series, run jointly by Sarum College and The Church Times

tickets available

 

Festival of Faith and Literature

28 February - 2 March 2025

tickets available

 

Visit our Events page for upcoming and past events 

The Church Times Archive

Read reports from issues stretching back to 1863, search for your parish or see if any of the clergy you know get a mention.

FREE for Church Times subscribers.

Explore the archive

Welcome to the Church Times

 

To explore the Church Times website fully, please sign in or subscribe.

Non-subscribers can read four articles for free each month. (You will need to register.)