[HPforGrownups] Re: Religion in the Wizarding World.

[Eric Oppen]

No: HPFGUIDX 191400

Quoting pippin_999 <foxmoth at qnet.com>:

>
:
> I can certainly believe that the Dursleys are too conformist to be   
> anything but the sort of nominal Christians that Geoff describes.    
> That is the milieu from which we can assume Harry comes. Yet nothing  
>  about the wizarding celebrations seems foreign to him.
>
> And that's really strange.
>
>  Consider -- mostly what wizards consider normal  is to the reader   
> (and Harry when he first encounters it) a mind-bending mix of   
> traditional, obsolete and totally divergent forms. But that's not   
> true of Christmas and Easter. There's nothing about the celebrations  
>  at Hogwarts or the Weasley household that Harry finds unfamiliar or  
>  archaic. It's *all*  British traditional: Christmas trees,   
> mistletoe, crackers, Easter eggs, feasts, presents, family   
> gatherings etc. Much of it is magical, but none of it is obsolete or  
>  weird. In other words, if a British reader who already celebrates   
> Christmas and Easter in the largely secular way wanted to celebrate   
> wizard fashion, she'd have to change -- nothing. Even the pretense   
> that the gifts and ornaments are supposedly magical is already   
> built-in.

Christmas-as-she-is-celebrated, in the English-speaking world, is  
largely of Victorian invention.  Prior to the early 19th century,  
Christmas was in eclipse; it had once had extensive traditional  
celebrations but those were suppressed under the Commonwealth, and by  
about Regency times it was mainly an excuse for drinking and eating to  
excess.

If you postulate a wave of Muggle-born wizards and witches in  
early-to-mid-Victorian times who were nostalgic for the Christmasses  
they'd known in the outside world, the wizards' world could easily  
have latched onto these observances with the same converts' zeal that  
the Muggles showed.

And many things about the WW have the air of a slightly-archaic  
Britain; calling their radio network "wireless," for example.  The WW  
may well go through phases of openness to Muggle cultural influence,  
and hostility to it.

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