Bitesize ethics Christmas 2024

Mr Scrooge, the Grinch, and the conscience of the anti-Christmas characters

Date: Wednesday 11 December 2025

Tutor: Alberto Giubilini

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.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/r-Ak8uwp6cM?si=m4aqBa6NVum2keZG

Trust, truth and tinsel: the ethics of the Santa tradition

Date: Thursday 12 December 2025

Tutor: Becky Brown

We normally value honesty and typically think it is morally wrong to lie. There might be some exceptions to this – if the consequences of truth-telling are likely to be very harmful, if it the lie is particularly trivial, for instance. The ‘Santa Claus lie’ is, however, often thought to be harmless and even positively valuable. People are actively encouraged to repeat this lie to their children and might be admonished for revealing the lie. In this session we will discuss the ethics of lying, specifically to children. We will consider the difference between paradigmatic lies and other ways of misleading without lying. We will then discuss the special case of the Santa Claus lie: what value it brings and whether this justifies its telling.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/FREZ_0dzRqM?si=2J3oUBIccepIWV1X

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