Potterversity Episode 17: Potter and the Pig

Potterversity: A Potter Studies Podcast

Looking to recover lost love? Discover the connections between the Harry Potter stories and The Christmas Pig.

Designed for younger readers, The Christmas Pig features a young boy going on a perilous quest to thwart a materialist villain, The Loser, and reclaim his lost, beloved best friend, Dur Pig (DP). In this first episode of the new year, Emily and Katy explore the similarities between The Christmas Pig and the Harry Potter novels. Common motifs include the value of courage and loyalty, the challenge in dealing with bullies and tyrants, anti-modernism and anti-materialism, the heroism of the small and marginalized, coping with death and our own mortality, and the transformative power of love.

Emily highlights the Christian themes appearing in both, particularly the magic of the Christmas season, comparing Hogwarts Christmases with the miraculous possibilities of Christmas Eve in traditional lore. She also explains the religious significance of some of the names in the story. Katy points out how, in both stories, “Things” gain sentience and agency through their proximity to people and absorption of human emotion. The Alivening of objects in The Christmas Pig is perhaps akin to spell-casting in the wizarding world.

We also explore the ways this novel, like the Potter series, fits Tolkien’s definition of a fairy story, especially the experience of a perilous realm, the way magic is taken seriously, and the tale’s eucatastrophic ending, with the finding of that which has been lost.