Sleep, sleep, old sun, thou canst not have repass’d,
As yet, the wound thou took’st on Friday last;
Sleep then, and rest; the world may bear thy stay;
A better sun rose before thee to-day.
(John Donne)

with my sincere apologies to C.S. Lewis and those who have loved his work

My dear Wormwood,

I have received your letter and noted with grave displeasure the apparent fear with which you hold the approaching season. While it is true that this time of year marks one of the great feast days of celebration for The Enemy’s followers, there is no need for this sort of abject panic which pours in sodden streams off your written pages. We have survived this terrible spectacle for centuries past and will continue to do so if we but proceed with a few simple cautions.

I was heartened by your report that your patient has begun to attend a “fundamentalist” church. Our Father Below has often found these groups to be a source of both great amusement and usefulness, especially in the way that they never cease to give him credit for trials and hardships that are of their own making. You are fortunate to have been given such easy patients for we have been issued detailed instructions for their care such that even you should find it impossible to fail.

It is imperative that you keep ever in your mind that our chief aim during these terrible days must not be to challenge but rather to subvert. We are only too happy to let these poor fools sing their insipid songs and have their tedious sermons so long as they are more consumed with being heard by others than listening to the lies of the Enemy themselves. Make them ever bearers of His Book but never true believers in it and we shall make quick work of them.

The more practical end of this grand design is simply to use the natural pride of place and station to take the eyes of these “fundamentalists” off The Enemy and his treachery and put their gaze instead on themselves and the faults of those around them. For in this season, many who would never think to enter a church will inexplicably and without warning dig their best clothes out of mothballs, round up their screaming children, and head for whatever territory of the Enemy happens to be most conveniently located near them. This is a prime opportunity for a diversion of all those regular members who will feel disdain for these interlopers as only being present merely because of the day and not (as they suppose the higher calling to be) out of perpetual duty. Do all you can to reinforce this feeling of pride in your patient by bringing his focus on their strange appearance, their fumbling with the hymnal, and their ignorance of when to sit and stand.

For the pièce de résistance, turn the mind of your patient to thoughts of how that “evangelizing” these seldom seen newcomers should be the focus of this day and of this season. Divert his thoughts from the remembrance of his own dalliance with The Enemy and the lies of what the greater significance of this day may be and turn his focus outward upon those “poor lost souls” for whom he can feel pity, or disgust, or annoyance or anything save kinship and brotherhood. For in no case may he be allowed to remember that both he and these strangers are alike formed of dust and that the Enemy has maliciously designed his plan to encompass both the pious and the poor in spirit. For if your patient can be convinced that his duty lies not in loving the Enemy but rather in the prideful pity of those around him, you may rest assured that all the songs and sermons in Christendom will have no more effect on him than if he were already safely with Our Father Below.

Your affectionate uncle,
SCREWTAPE