Religion in US, UK, Hogwarts Schools (was I saw (more than) three ships ...

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 128552

Geofff:
> It was in the long period of development of social conscience over 
> many centuries, underpinned by Christian belief, that Hogwarts was 
> also developing its ethos and traditions. 

Pippin:

One of the lovely things about fiction, IMO, is that there isn't any
right or wrong way to interpret it. 

Centaurs and unicorns are explicitly called magical, but if you
didn't know that Christmas is a religious holy day or that a friar 
is a member of a Christian religious order, the books wouldn't 
tell you. It is up to the reader to supply the reference. The word
for this kind of indirectness is ''allusion'.  Its root word means
'play'. 

Allegory, on the other hand, comes from the  word for 'marketplace.' 
The allegorist has something to sell, and an allegory rests, as 
Tolkien put it, on the "purposed domination of the author." 
(You can tell that, like JKR, he didn't like allegory very
much.)

Not everyone 'gets' allusion, and those who do bring to it their own
varied experience and frame of reference. That's part of the game. 
Because we don't know what Sirius's frame of reference is, we don't
know whether he was alluding to the lines, "Remember Christ our 
Savior was born on Christmas Day" or not. 

We know a little more about JKR's frame of reference, but there
again, Sirius's song need only be read as an allusion to Christianity
by someone who is familiar with the carol, and chooses to make the 
connection. It is not 'rubbishing' the influence of Christianity on
the real  world, or on JKR, to imagine a pagan or multi-cultural or 
religiously neutral wizarding world. By using allusion, she has left
it up to the reader to decide. 

As for the historical context, King James, who sponsored the most 
influential translation of the Bible into English, also was a fierce 
persecutor of supposed witches and wizards. It  wouldn't be at all 
surprising to me to discover that the wizarding world and religion 
in general came to a parting of the ways and not on friendly terms.

 I've sometimes wondered if religion hasn't  been forced underground
in the Wizarding World the way magic has in the Muggle world. Maybe 
wizards celebrate Christmas and name godparents the way many people 
celebrate Hallowe'n or choose a May queen, with no idea that it ever
had any spiritual content whatsoever.  And just as there are a few
Muggles who are aware of the magical world, perhaps there are a few
wizards to whom religion is still important. Maybe one of the reasons 
Harry's christening was such a  small affair was that his parents and
Sirius were among those few. 

Pippin