News Reporter: Act Four: 'Little Women' and Christmas stories that are actually about Christianity

Friday, 23 December 2016

Act Four: 'Little Women' and Christmas stories that are actually about Christianity

Alyssa Rosenberg on culture and politics

A White House made out of gingerbread and LEGOs is displayed last month in the State Dinning Room at the White House in Washington. (Andrew Harnik/Associated Press)

The War on Christmas is as much a real conflict as Oceania’s wars with Eurasia and Eastasia. But given that this particular front in the culture wars has been opened up again by people who enjoy picking at this particular scab, I found myself returning to one of my favorite Christmas stories and to one of my favorite explicitly Christian novels.

Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women,” or at least the first volume of it, takes place between two Christmases. During the first, Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy and their mother, known as Marmee, try to scrape together a celebration during the shortages of the Civil War and the absence of the girls’ father, who is serving as a chaplain in the Union Army, and wonder about the boy next door. And by the next, Meg is engaged, Jo has continued to develop her talents as a writer, Beth has survived a serious illness, Amy has begun to grow up, their father has come home, and that boy, whose name turns out to be Laurie, has begun the process that will make him a member of the family.

In the intervening months, the action in “Little Women” is structured like “The Pilgrim’s Progress,” John Bunyan’s much more didactic 1678 fable of Christian moral improvement. Jo grapples with her temper and ambition, Meg and Amy with their tendencies toward luxury and Laurie with his impulsiveness. “Little Women” is explicitly a religious story, though not necessarily a proselytizing one — it’s about the role that Christianity plays in the characters’ larger struggle to be good. Readers can take a message from “Little Women” if they want to, but you don’t have to be a Christian — as I am not — to love the novel.

Maybe if you’re a certain brand of Christian, that’s not enough at Christmastime. But I tend to think that Christians who would like to see Christmas not merely be a major part of American life, but also to be centered on the life of Christ himself, might do well to take a leaf from “Little Women” and remember that they can make the best argument for their faith by making that message of goodness beautiful and compelling, rather than by demanding subservience to it.