RELS 26946 - The “Religion” of Christmas

Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0

The “Religion” of Christmas The course will explore the evolution of the modern Christmas holiday with an aim to challenge traditional ways of conceptualizing the religion/secular binary. Instead of associating “religion” with formal or institutional forms of Christianity or seeing Christmas as a commercial and secular holiday, this course, informed by the concept of “implicit religion,” examines the idea that Santa and Jesus, consumerism and the transcendent, and the profane and the sacred create this annual ritual passage of sacred time, and not necessarily in opposition to each other. The course begins with New Testament portrayals of the nativity of Jesus and concludes with the recent “War on Christmas” controversies in US. [R]