Why G.K. Chesterton and his wife loved Christmas so much

ST. PAUL, Minn. (OSV News) -- "The hands that made the sun and stars were too small to reach the huge heads of cattle," G.K. Chesterton wrote in "The Everlasting Man."

He was speaking, of course, of Jesus in the manger. It's "a line that should be on a Christmas card," said Dale Ahlquist, president of the Society of Gilbert Keith Chesterton. "The whole center of history is when Christ comes to earth, when God becomes a human being. ... It's the Incarnation in a nutshell."

Devoted fans of Chesterton (1874-1936), a well-known British writer and Catholic convert, marked the 150th anniversary of his birthday in May. He is beloved worldwide for "his great way of turning a phrase," Ahlquist said. And that's especially true for his writings about Christmas, which was a special holiday for the writer and his wife, Frances.

While Chesterton wrote on a vast number of subjects, Christmas was a favorite, said Ahlquist, one of the world's most respected Chesterton scholars. First, Chesterton was a big fan of the writer Charles Dickens, who penned the 1843 novella "A Christmas Carol," helping to revive interest in Christmas traditions in Victorian England, which had waned under Puritan influence.

More than a half-century later, Chesterton is credited for helping to revive interest in Dickens, Ahlquist said, including his role in restoring Christmas, through Chesterton's 1906 book "Charles Dickens." Chesterton's contemporary T.S. Eliot called it the "best on that author that has ever been written."

Because of Chesterton, the publisher J.M. Dent put out new editions of Dickens' work in 24 volumes for the Everyman's Library. Chesterton wrote the introductions.

Chesterton shared Dickens' love for Christmas traditions and was known to dress as Santa Claus for friends' children. With Chesteron's girth and jolly disposition, "you can imagine how perfect he would have been as Father Christmas," Ahlquist said.

Children were important in the Chestertons' lives, in part because of their personal sorrow of not being able to have children of their own. "When they realized they were not going to have any children, they made a big deal out of Christmas for other people's families," Ahlquist said.

They also developed what Ahlquist described as a "mystical devotion" to the Nativity scene, and Frances kept a set in nearly every room of their house.

"They celebrated the Christ Child in a way that they celebrated the birth of a child, because that's the child for all of us," he said.

The couple also sent beautiful Christmas cards that included their original Christmas poetry. Two of Frances' Christmas poems have been turned into carols: "How Far Is It to Bethlehem?" and "Here Is the Little Door."

In an online essay about Frances, her biographer Nancy Carpentier Brown described Chesterton's wife as "obsessed by Christmas."

"Frances had a nativity set up in every room, each one unique in size, shape, and style," Brown wrote. "She collected miniature ornaments and kept them on display all year round. She wrote Christmas plays, spending months writing, planning, sewing costumes and painting sets. Her poetry centered on a Christmas theme and each year she wrote a new poem to be included in the family Christmas card that she sent out to all of their friends."

The Nativity collection, Brown explained, began with one set. Then she added another, then another. "And as she looked at that nativity, with tiny little baby Jesus, she began to contemplate that wintry scene," Brown wrote of Frances. "She used her imagination to wonder what it would be like to hold the Christ Child? What if she touched his tiny hand? What if she felt the ox and ass breathing in the stable? What if she saw Mary and Joseph?"

Frances wrote a Christmas play called "The Christmas Gift," in which a family's father comes home after having been missing in the First World War. He arrives with a baby.

"The parents already have three children, but the mother takes the baby in as her own," Brown wrote of the play. "'Is he the Christ Child?' asks one of her children. 'Oh darling, who can tell?' Frances has the mother answer. She reminds us that every child is an image of the Baby Jesus, and any baby just might be the Holy Child."

One of Ahlquist's favorite Christmas poems is G.K. Chesterton's "The Wise Men." "It's about the Wise Men walking through the rain and snow, and … by the end of the poem, we are walking with them, and we are children," he said. "We've all become children walking up to the Christ Child."

Chesterton's love of Christmas inspired an Advent devotional, "Winter Fire: Christmas with G.K. Chesterton" by Ryan Whitaker Smith, published in 2023 by Moody Publishers.

"One of the reasons we go to Chesterton to find out what he said is because he has a great way of saying it. We can trust him to put it into words in a special way because of his great gift for the language," Ahlquist said. "He seems to just capture the truth in such an obvious and concise way."

He also noted that Chesterton is the "master of paradox" -- "stating a truth that seems to be the opposite of true" -- and that is also the case with Christmas, especially in the Northern Hemisphere.

"First of all, it's a great paradox that God himself becomes a baby," Ahlquist said. "But then there's the paradox of Christmas itself, which is a winter feast."

"We are in the middle of the winter, and here we are having a huge feast," continued Ahlquist, who lives in Minnesota. "We're having this feast in defiance of the time of year. We expect to have the feast at harvest time or to celebrate the spring. But no, in the middle of winter, we're celebrating with this gigantic event. And there's something paradoxical about it that I love."