Muggle Practices/Religion

[Geoff Bannister]

No: HPFGUIDX 79047

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "ioogooi" <ioogooi at y...> wrote:
> Wanda wrote:
> > I have no 
> > problem with the small amount of "decorative" Christian influence 
> > she's introduced so far; "God bless you, merry Hippogriffs" just 
> > struck me as a joke, and the references to Christmas and Easter 
> > vacations, it seems to me, are just methods of carrying over 
Muggle 
> > normality into the WW.  If she called them "Solstice Holidays", 
> we'd notice it too much and think that she was making some serious 
> point about wizard beliefs and worship; this way, it just points up 
> the similarity between the two worlds.  They have holidays just 
like 
> we do.  C.S. Lewis did this in 'The Lion the Witch and the 
Wardrobe', 
> > where Narnia was a land imprisoned by a witch so that it was 
always 
> > winter, "but never Christmas".  One just accepts this; if you try 
> to figure out how a world that doesn't know Christ can have 
Christmas, 
> > the whole story just comes to a stop. >>>
> 
> 
> Hi Wanda,
> It's funny that you mentioned C.S. Lewis, because he's a writer 
that 
> was very interested in Christianity.  He might be the exact 
opposite 
> of JK Rowling in terms of putting religions themes and values into 
> his stories.  While Rowling doesn't go extensively into religion, 
it 
> does reflect certain modern attitudes to religion.  And I don't 
think 
> it's all that fatal to talk about religion in the Harry Potter 
> books.  I think it makes the story more interesting and indepth, 
even 
> if it's only extraneous speculation from the reader's end.
> 
> Liz

More than "interested". He was a Christian, a Protestant evangelical 
who wrote extensively on Christian matters. LWW was intended as a way 
of introducing young people to the truths of the Christian message. I 
have remarked in a previous post that he was converted to 
Christianity while at Oxford due to the influence of Hugo Dyson and 
JRR Tolkien, who curiously was a devout Catholic. Both these writers 
used their faith to underpin their writings. JKR writes enough in her 
books for people like myself to be able to draw on HP when making 
points with young people's groups in the churc.

Geoff