C. S. Lewis Was a Grinch

Father Christmas

The writer loved the Incarnation. Not so much the Christmas holiday.

“If there were less good will,” C. S. Lewis often said in December correspondence, “then we might have more peace on earth.” Lewis found no pleasure in the giving of generic winter cards, gift guilting, and the overall hurried pace of the Christmas season.

Lewis went from saying “I hope I am not a Scrooge” in a letter in 1952 to admitting his “real name is Scrooge” in another letter in 1956. In short, C. S. Lewis wasn’t a fan of the most wonderful time of the year. This attitude only intensified as he aged.

When I visited Lewis’s home parish, Holy Trinity Church in England, an elderly woman working the small gift shop inside remarked that she knew Lewis when she was a child. “He was a grumpy old man,” she told me.

Many consider C. S. Lewis a warm symbol of holiday cheer, particularly given his inclusion of Father Christmas in the Narnia stories. Yet the more I read by Lewis on the topic of Christmas, the more I’m reminded of my conversation with the clerk at Holy Trinity Church. Read More

C.S. Lewis also hated church music.