The children’s fantasy classic (and the adult’s as well), The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis is a wonderful Yuletide adventure story.  And the best film presentation of Lewis’ Christian parable is not the Disney Hollywood version released in 2005, but rather the BBC television production which was made in 1988.

The BBC version is so very true to Lewis’ storytelling style and the children chosen for the parts of Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy look and act like English middle-class public school kids circa 1939.  The low tech features of the BBC series add to its charm and provides an authentic feel to the time period portrayed—you really do get drawn into the setting and you get to experience the adventure in a much more personal way when you’re not blinded by endless special effects.  And yet despite its simplicity, or perhaps because of it, the film has such a magical quality which is apparent right from the opening credits.

I think Lewis would have been entranced by this BBC effort.  I sure was.

The Wisdom of C. S. Lewis:

• A children’s story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children’s story in the slightest.

• No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally – and often far more – worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond.

• You can make anything by writing.

• Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.

• I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

• Atheism turns out to be too simple.  If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning.

• You don’t have a soul.  You are a soul.  You have a body.