Whether it’s Dolly Parton warbling “’Tis the season to be jolly” in the film A Smoky Mountain, or carollers belting out 16th century Welsh carols, we all know “’Tis the season to be jolly.”

The past six months we reached new heights of jollity through the spectacularly successful Rugby World Cup, and then grasping at the gilded promises of politicians. Now we face Christmas when we resort to a bowdlerised version of the Christmas event hoping the “jolly season” will bring us copious amounts of happiness.

There is hardly a book that doesn’t have some reference to the human search for happiness. Professor Andrew Hacker, a recent guest on Radio New Zealand, has a comment worth noting. In 1970, while Professor of Government at Cornell University, he wrote The End of the American Era, a broad swipe at American life in general. Many prognostications have dated, but his comment on happiness is still relevant:

“At an early age, children begin to understand the importance of their current happiness for their parent’s self-esteem. ...

“Americans exhibit more concern over their children’s happiness than do parents in any other country. Anger, sullenness, even periods of silence on the part of children create parental discomfiture and are construed as symptoms of failure in child rearing. (Previous generations of parents did not really care whether or not children were happy.) ... Today’s adults need a display of smiles each day – even if a price must be paid for these – as reassurance of parental success. Certainly, the preoccupation of mothers and fathers with their offspring’s happiness has as much to do with their own quest for peace of mind as with the affection they have for the children.”

Another who picks up this theme is James Atlas in his memoir My Life in the Middle Ages. Atlas, a Harvard graduate, Rhodes scholar and an editor of the New York Times Magazine for many years, writes about reaching the threshold of old age. Atlas concludes that he can “be happy for the simple reason that I’m not dead, have enough money, and no one I love is sick.”

For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio is a long poem written by W.H. Auden around 1941-2. Included in the poem is a Christmas prayer:

“O God, put away justice and truth for we cannot understand them and we do not want them. Eternity would bore us dreadfully. Leave thy heavens and come down to our earth of water clocks and hedges. Become our uncle. Look after baby, amuse Grandfather, help Willie with his homework and introduce Muriel to a handsome naval officer. Be interesting and weak like us, and we will love you as we love ourselves.”

Commenting on the prayer, Ralph Sockman suggests the poem is a reminder that, in seeking happiness at whatever age or stage of life, we can easily reduce God to a Santa Claus who comes down our chimneys and fills our stocking with our desires. In short, we make God our ally rather than our Sovereign. Christ, he affirms, came to save us, not to satisfy us.

Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw, not noted for Christian insights, nevertheless put his finger on one when he said: “The true joy of life is being used for a purpose instead of being feverish little clods of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making us happy.”

On that high note, “Tis the season to be jolly!”

Drawn & Quoted is Tom Cadman's look at life and faith through the lens of literature.