Exmas

... and beyond this there lies in the ocean, turned towards the west and the north, the island of Niatirb which Hecataeus indeed declares to be the same size and shape as Sicily, but it is larger, and though in calling it triangular a man would not miss the mark. It is densely inhabited by men who wear clothes not very different from other barbarians who occupy the north- western parts of Europe though they do not agree with them in language. These islanders, surpassing all the men of whom we know in patience and endurance, use the following customs.

In the middle of winter when fogs and rains most abound they have a great festival which they call Exmas , and for fifty days they prepare for it in the fashion I shall describe. First of all, every citizen is obliged to send to each of his friends and relations a square piece of hard paper stamped with a picture, which in their speech is called an Exmas-card . But the pictures represent birds sitting on branches, or trees with a dark green prickly leaf, or else men in such garments as the Niatirbians believe that their ancestors wore two hundred years ago riding in coaches such as their ancestors used, or houses with snow on their roofs. And the Niatirbians are unwilling to say what these pictures have to do with the festival, guarding (as I suppose) some sacred mystery. And because all men must send these cards the market-place is filled with the crowd of those buying them, so that there is great labour and weariness.

But having bought as many as they suppose to be sufficient, they return to their houses and find there the like cards which others have sent to them. And when they find cards from any to whom they also have sent cards, they throw them away and give thanks to the gods that this labour at least is over for another year. But when they find cards from any to whom they have not sent, then they beat their breasts and wail and utter curses against the sender; and, having sufficiently lamented their misfortune, they put on their boots again and go out into the fog and rain and buy a card for him also. And let this account suffice about Exmas-cards.

They also send gifts to one another, suffering the same things about the gifts as about the cards, or even worse. For every citizen has to guess the value of the gift which every friend will send to him so that he may send one of equal value, whether he can afford it or not. And they buy as gifts for one another such things as no man ever bought for himself. For the sellers, understanding the custom, put forth all kinds of trumpery, and whatever, being useless and ridiculous, sell as an Exmas gift. And though the Niatirbians profess themselves to lack sufficient necessary things, such as metal, leather, wood and paper, yet an incredible quantity of these things is wasted every year, being made into the gifts.

But during these fifty days the oldest, poorest and the most miserable of citizens put on false beards and red robes and walk in the market-place; being disguised (in my opinion) as Cronos. And the sellers of gifts no less than the purchasers become pale and weary, because of the crowds and the fog, so that any man who came into a Niatirbian city at this season would think that some great calamity had fallen on Niatirb. This fifty days of preparation is called in their barbarian speech the Exmas Rush .

But when the day of the festival comes, then most of the citizens, being exhausted with the Rush , lie in bed till noon. But in the evening they eat five times as much supper as on other days and, crowning themselves with crowns of paper, they become intoxicated. And on the day after Exmas they are very grave, being internally disordered by the supper and the drinking and reckoning how much they have spent on gifts and on the wine. For wine is so dear among the Niatirbians that a man must swallow the worth of a talent before he is well intoxicated.

Such, then, are their customs about the Exmas. But the few among the Niatirbians have also a festival, separate and to themselves, called Crissmas , which is on the same day as Exmas. And those who keep Crissmas, doing the opposite to the majority of the Niatirbians, rise early on that day with shining faces and go before sunrise to certain temples where they partake of a sacred feast. And in most of the temples they set out images of a fair woman with a new-born Child on her knees and certain animals and shepherds adoring the Child. (The reason of these images is given in a certain sacred story which I know but do not repeat.)

But I myself conversed with a priest in one of these temples and asked him why they kept Crissmas on the same day as Exmas; for it appeared to me inconvenient. But the priest replied, “It is not lawful, O Stranger, for us to change the date of Crissmas, but would that Zeus would put it into the minds of the Niatirbians to keep Exmas at some other time or not to keep it at all. For Exmas and the Rush distract the minds even of the few from sacred things. And we indeed are glad that men should make merry at Crissmas; but in Exmas there is no merriment left.”

And when I asked him why they endured the Rush, he replied, “It is, O Stranger, a racket, using (as I suppose) the words of some oracle and speaking unintelligibly to me (for a racket is an instrument which the barbarians use in a game called tennis ).

But what Hecataeus says, that Exmas and Crissmas are the same, is not credible. For the first, the pictures which are stamped on the Exmas-cards have nothing to do with the sacred story which the priests tell about Crissmas. And secondly, the most part of the Niatirbians, not believing the religion of the few, nevertheless send the gifts and cards and participate in the Rush and drink, wearing paper caps. But it is not likely that men, even being barbarians, should suffer so many and great things in honour of a god they do not believe in. And now, enough about Niatirb.

C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock,

"Xmas and Christmas: A Lost Chapter from Herodotus"

(1st published in Time and Tide, 1954)

Jack's meeting with Joy

Joy (then) Gresham at her second meeting (September 1952) with Jack and Warnie, on being given a single glass of sherry before their meal, “I call this civilized. In the States, they give you so much hard stuff that you start the meal drunk and end with a hangover.” She attacked modern American literature... “Mind you, I wrote that sort of bunk myself when I was young.” Small farm life was the only good life", she said. Jack spoke up then. Saying that, on his father’s side, he came from farming stock, “I felt that,” she said. “Where else could you get the vitality?”

George Sayer, ‘Jack: C.S. Lewis and His Times’

Lewis's Accent

[Image: Little Lea, Belfast]

MARIAN VAN TIL (Associate Editor, Christian Courier, St. Catharines, Ont./Lewiston, NY) writes in MERELEWIS:

Long ago I saw a minute or two of a filmed version of him reading in a BBC studio but I didn't recall the voice. I expected him to sound slightly more Irish. It took some getting used to to match the voice and the face/personality that we've come to know.

The voice, at first hearing, is one of those perennial snobbish-sounding, upper-crust British accents that everyone likes to imitate. I can understand why Lewis was apparently taken aback and said he didn't like the way he sounded when he heard himself on tape for the first time.

Very, very ‘Oxford.’ But then you begin to hear other nuances. In fact, I kept thinking: 'Who does he sound like?' There's an actor who pronounces some of his words like that, and has a similar vocal quality. I finally had it: that actor is Sean Connery. I can't explain that in terms of the origins of and influences on their accents, obviously, but there are some definite similarities.

Another interesting tidbit: Lewis pronounces the word "supposed"/"supposal" (which he used frequently when speaking of Williams) with interior "b's" rather than "p's."

DOUGLAS GRESHAM responded:
'Its more of a subdued labial-stopped "p" than a "b", and it sounds more pronounced in recordings (particularly if the quality isn't the best) than it did in real life. It was almost the only shadow of Northern Ireland that years of Public School and Oxford had left in Jack's accent.'

JAMES O'FEE added:
'Ulster, and Belfast, speech is strongly influenced by Scottish patterns. (This might explain the resemblance with the speech of Scotsman Sean Connery.)

In James Como's C. S. LEWIS AT THE BREAKFAST TABLE (Harvest, Harcourt Brace, New York, 1982) we find:

1. (page 6) Leo Baker writes of CSL speaking, as an undergraduate after WW1, 'with the slight remains of a Belfast accent'; and
2. (page 440) Derek Brewer writes of Lewis, as a tutor at Oxford, rather later in life: "The plump cheerful man....who rolled his Rs".

The 'rolled', or 'trilled', R occurs in several varieties of British speech, notably Scots. Yet I confess that I can find little Irish, or Ulster, in the recordings of Lewis that I've heard. Nor a rolled R.'

DOUGLAS GRESHAM replied:
I never heard Jack roll or trill (not the same thing by the way) an "R" at all. And as you say there was barely a trace of Ulster left in his accent. Though of course both he and Warnie could put it on when humour required.

JAMES O'FEE again:
For example, Derek Brewer writes [C. S. LEWIS AT THE BREAKFAST TABLE, ed. James Como, New York, 1982, page 50]:

[Lewis] 'was once on a committee with [T. S.] Eliot to revise the translation of the Psalms and referred to himself, in comparison with Eliot, as a "whippersnapper" - pronounced very Irish, with aspirated initial WH with strongly rolled Rs.'

C S Lewis Centenary Group
Number 11, April 1998