Tim Minchin on his love of Christmas

By ALICE GRIBBIN - NEW STATESMAN
Added: Tue, 20 Dec 2011 01:58:50 UTC

Extracts from the comedian's article in the special Richard Dawkins guest-edited New Statesman.
Photo: Getty Images

Among the highlights of the special Christmas issue of the New Statesman, guest-edited by Richard Dawkins and available for purchase here, the comedian and actor Tim Minchin offers anecdotes from the past and present Minchin family vault, and vindicates his love of the festive season's fictional tales:

... I face a dilemma: I had sold [my daughter] the myth of Father Christmas in the spirit of allowing a child a sense of wonderment, but I felt that lying to her face when she'd asked me point blank about the veracity of my claims was a step too far.
I fumbled around a bit before opting for: "Father Christmas is real . . . in the imaginary world."

Unsurprisingly to him, Minchin's four-year-old is not satisfied by this offering:

Like so much language in theology, philosophy and parenting, that sentence has the odour of wisdom, but is a load of old bollocks. Quite nice as a phrase, but pure sophistry, like a lot of the stuff I say on stage and like nearly everything your preacher has ever said.

Yet these stories -- even the "quite nice one" about Jesus -- are less troubling to Minchin's skeptical mind than one may think: