From main site OT: Christmas at Hogwarts

[davewitley]

David:
> "That religion, politics, and sex are not discussed at parties is 
> surely merely a quirk of the late 20th and early 21st Century 
west, 
> and our descendants will doubtless laugh at us for being so 
> repressed."

> Meidbh:
> Oh dear, I most definitely did not mean to come out in support of 
> repression or supression of opinions *shiver shiver*. What I was 
> trying to get across was that it's not so much an issue of subject 
> matter but of context of expression. There are some environments 
> where it makes sense to avoid issues that can provoke strongly 
> polarised opinions. Argument as intellectual debate can be great 
fun 
> when you know the players, but when you don't (ie the party 
context) 
> there is always a risk that your debate can cause offence, anger, 
> upset, alienate people and generally be counterproductive. 

Sure, and I don't think you sounded as if you did.  Although I was a 
little tongue-in-cheek with my comment above, there are aspects of 
the way we behave in the face of controversial subjects that puzzle 
me.  Chief among these is the phenomenon whereby, when someone 
expresses their view on a controversial matter, people of the 
opposing view act as if they feel that they are being coerced into 
changing their minds, or are being marginalised or even put down in 
some way, or there rights are being infringed in some other way.  
(How often have you read the phrase "I have the right to say xyz" 
or "we have freedom of speech" in the middle of a debate where 
nobody had remotely suggested otherwise?)

I'd be interested to hear others' observations on this subject.

> So how does this tie into HP and religious themes? Well one of the 
> many reasons the HP books have had such mass appeal is that  
> references to the RW are kept general enough that a reader from 
> almost any background can "fill in the blanks" and make the book 
> their own. Readers in Beijing or Mumbai or London could all 
imagine 
> themselves at Hogwarts casting spells at Harry's side. It truly is 
> an incredible thing to tell a story so well that people all over 
the 
> world listen and are enthralled. IMVVHO an overt association with 
> any specific religious or political belief system would break this 
> spell. 

Yes - agreed, and so I agree (which was the original discussion) 
that one can't make much of the fact that Hogwarts celebrates 
Christmas and has an Easter holiday.  However that has IMO little 
bearing on the wider issues of Christian influence on JKR or 
deliberate introduction of Christian themes by her.

David