Instead of our normal Friday subgenre study, I thought we’d take a look at Christmas stories and debate their genre. Christmas stories tend to involve angels, ghosts, flying reindeer, elves, and an immortal who has the power to visit every household in the world in a very short time frame. (Though, admittedly, if you take out the areas of the world that don’t believe in Santa, it’s less impressive.) Oh, yeah, and frost demons, enchanted snowmen…
I mean, some Christmas stories are free of fantastical elements. White Christmas, for example. But Christmas itself is filled with elements that, outside of the holidays, most of us do not believe in. Yet there are religious subtext, and religion gets a bit grumpy if you associate it with mythology, so.
I’m really interested in how other people see this. Do you consider Christmas and its elements to be a work of fantasy, or something else?
I consider it pure fantasy, yes, but I’m an atheist.
Considering it fantasy, however, does not make it any less important, though to me, it’s about friends and family, not religion.
I think it falls under magical realism, which I guess puts it squarely into a subset of fantasy. 🙂
I can’t really call Santa a religious figure, at least not as he is expressed these days.