OxTalks will soon move to the new Halo platform and will become 'Oxford Events.' There will be a need for an OxTalks freeze. This was previously planned for Friday 14th November – a new date will be shared as soon as it is available (full details will be available on the Staff Gateway).
In the meantime, the OxTalks site will remain active and events will continue to be published.
If staff have any questions about the Oxford Events launch, please contact halo@digital.ox.ac.uk
Mr Scrooge and the Grinch are the most popular personifications of a pervasive trope in narratives around Christmas: the grumpy old man starts off despising everything and everyone that reminds him of Christmas and, through a change of heart triggered by some external event, by the end of the story fully embraces the spirit of Christmas. This narrative expresses, more or less intentionally, the same Christian meaning of Christmas as redemption through the birth of Jesus. In the anti-Christmas characters, redemption happens through some form of introspection, which radically changes their perspective – itself a symbolic new birth. For in reality, the external events only prompt them to examine what is already part of themselves, which is one of the core functions traditionally attributed to conscience. In this Bitesize event we will use these anti-Christmas characters as a starting point for a brief discussion of how the message of Christmas illuminates different aspects of conscience that have been at the centre of its philosophical analysis throughout history.
