Christmas in the Harry Potter saga is always special. In an already magical world, the Christmas scenes in Potter (always snowy!) bring a heightened sense of magic to the story, bordering on the religious. It’s telling that the story finally drops its first and only overt references to religion—two Christian scripture passages—on Christmas in the Godric’s Hollow churchyard scene in Deathly Hallows. Each and every Christmas, Harry somehow gets a glimpse of the type of hero he must become to solve the problem at hand, and that problem is always Voldemort: the problem of sin and death itself. Funnily enough, Christmas, in the Christian sense of salvation history, also manifests the hopeful beginnings of the solution to the problem of sin and death. This is no coincidence. At Christmas, Harry often receives important gifts to help him in his quest, just as humanity received the gift of Jesus Christ, the light of the world, to help and guide us on the way to eternal life. The gifts and lessons Harry receives every Christmas show him that his own heroism must be patterned after this same Christ in his incarnation: God who becomes human, to show us that true honor, true heroism and true godliness lie in humility and loving friendship.
By far the most precious gift Harry receives on Christmas is the Invisibility Cloak, received on his first Christmas at Hogwarts and accompanied by a note from the giver, Albus Dumbledore, advising him to “use it well.” Harry’s Invisibility Cloak really had to be given to him at Christmas, rather than, as we might have expected, when he first arrived at Hogwarts. When Harry first handles the Cloak on Christmas, it is described as “fluid and silvery gray,” and “like water woven into material.” The baptismal imagery here is apt; Harry does not realize it yet, but this gift from his father James (who sacrificed his life for Harry’s), passed through his father-figure Dumbledore (who will do the same), initiates him into a particular type of heroism: one that protects and defends others, using the magic of friendship and humility, rather than the violent hubris of Voldemort, to rob death of its power.
Dom Luke Bell, in his 2010 book Baptizing Harry Potter, gives a cogent and compelling theological analysis of the Invisibility Cloak, with a long view to the end of the series. Bell explains how themes of power and weakness, humility and strength, operate close to the saga’s moral and religious core from its very first chapter, in baby Harry’s mysterious defeat of Voldemort. “However, the difference between the first defeat of Voldemort’s power and his final defeat is not just the difference between a battle won and war won, it is a difference between defeat by an involuntary and unconscious weakness and defeat by a voluntary and conscious weakness. […] we might say it is the difference between Christmas and Easter.”
To build on Bell’s intriguing yet passing comment here, this “difference between Christmas and Easter” means that while both feasts celebrate the Christ, at Christmas, we celebrate the hope and possibility of the invitation God bestows on humanity to enter into the divine life through the incarnation: the joining of divine and human, in Christ. In between Christmas and Easter comes discipleship in Christ: learning to die to self, putting one’s ego aside, remaining obedient to God, even in the face of hardship. Then at Easter, if our learning has been led by grace, we join with Christ in his ultimate expression of humility and friendship in consciously choosing weakness and vulnerability, “becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross” (Phil. 2: 8b). But the weakness of God is stronger than human strength (1 Cor. 1:25). At Christmas, we begin learning to view humility and weakness as a good, even a divine thing; at Easter, weakness wins.
Harry’s signature Cloak is bestowed upon him at Christmas because it symbolizes and prefigures the key ingredient to his defeat of Voldemort in the end of the series: humility and fellowship—notions at the heart of incarnational theology. Bell says these are the “fundamental values associated with the cloak.” In “The Tale of the Three Brothers” in Deathly Hallows, the youngest brother’s wise choice of hiddenness from death, symbolized by the Cloak, denotes humility and the avoidance of pride, which separates humans from God. Bell points to the ironic relationship between humility and exaltation throughout scripture: that those who humble themselves are honored and lifted up by God. This is no more apparent than in the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ humble birth to marginalized people in a marginal space, and his ironic exaltation by angels, shepherds and magi as the savior of humanity, while still an infant. Bell notes that Dumbledore’s pride in Harry’s choice to keep only the Cloak in the King’s Cross chapter of Deathly Hallows is pride in Harry’s spiritual maturity for choosing humility. But the Cloak also points subtly to fellowship. Dumbledore tells Harry in Deathly Hallows that the Cloak’s true magic is its ability “to protect and shield others as well as its owner.” Especially when Harry is young, the Cloak affords him the aid of friends, usually Ron and Hermione, in many of his confrontations with evil. Christmas is the perfect time for Harry to receive this particular gift because while the Cloak itself does not bring about his triumph, it prefigures and enables the type of heroism that will—just as Christmas prefigures Easter.
In some sense, Christmas makes a good metaphor for the Harry Potter saga itself, with its deep core of religious meaning that does not exclude secular participation and enjoyment. And Harry’s Cloak is a timely metaphor for the type of life we mortals are to lead while we struggle with the earthly challenges of our material existence and mortality. We are invited to live under the Invisibility Cloak of God’s grace, not putting our faith in the material realm, but cloaked in a humility that causes us (and those we invite with us “under the Cloak”) to disappear amid the world’s temptations. Thus, through grace, we may dwell in the safety of the soul, the interior life, which, through the promise of Christ’s incarnation, never dies.
A very happy Christmas to you and yours, and blessings for health, happiness and prosperity in the new year!