10 Lessons Doctor Who Teaches Us About Christmas
3. The Legends Of Christmas Change Through The Years
Ever wondered how Christmas will be remembered in the future? Well, according to salesman and con artist, Mr Copper, the UK was “Ruled over by Good King Wenceslas ... human beings worshipped the great god Santa, a creature with fearsome claws, and his wife Mary. And every Christmas Eve, people of UK go to war with the country of Turkey. They then eat the Turkey people for Christmas dinner. Like savages!"
It’s all too easy to dismiss Mr Copper as a maverick storyteller with false credentials, but in all likelihood he was adding to a long process of mistranslation, mishearing and embellishment.
Russell T Davies annoyed and appeased Christians in equal measure during his time as showrunner. On the one hand he modelled the Tenth Doctor on their Messiah, while on the other he had the Doctor suggest that the canonical gospels were historically inaccurate (The Planet of the Dead).
Without doubt, Mr Copper’s version of Christmas is a little dig at the way in which legends change over time. For Santa, read Jesus – raised to the status of a god, and for Turkey read the wafers and the wine, administered in communion and said by some denominations of the church to be the actual body and blood of Jesus. It’s not hard to see what the writer’s getting at.
Whatever your religious beliefs, it’s worth remembering that the passing of traditions through time and space inevitably alters the details, a fact no better illustrated than the traditional nativity scene which owes as much to Victorian sensibilities than anything recorded in the gospels.