Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without many things: mince pies, mulled wine, candlelit carol services and the Queen’s speech, to name but a few. But now, as old Father Hollywood has decreed, it also wouldn’t be Christmas without that greatest of traditions, an epic sword-and-sorcery spectacular. Whether it’s schoolboys battling evil wizards with wands or short chaps with hairy feet resisting the power of rings, we’ve developed a yuletide appetite for fantasy.

Last year’s Lord of the Rings-sized hole was ably filled by The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. This year, it’s the turn of Eragon, a larger-than-life story of dragon riders, cruel sorcerers and evil despots. It’s all very energetic, though (perhaps not surprisingly) it fails to fill the shoes of Tolkien and Lewis.

It has all the usual ingredients that we love in our ‘grand’ stories. An orphan boy lives with his uncle out in the sticks, discovers amazing powers and leaves home to be schooled in the ways of magic and, along the way, ‘fulfil his destiny’. So far, so good – and so very similar to Star Wars, Harry Potter and the aforementioned LOTR. But what is missing (and it’s quite a substantial omission) is God.

Or, to be more specific, a Godlike figure: a venerable sage with a pure white beard whose powers are to be feared, and whose wisdom to be dismissed only at great cost to the hero. Chances are that in the course of events the old man will also end up sacrificing his life for the greater good, only to be resurrected in a form even more powerful than before.

Step up, Obi-wan Kenobi, Albus Dumbledore and Gandalf, your game has been rumbled! I hesitate to throw Father Christmas into the mix, but it does seem we just can’t do without our God substitute. Of course, few people would readily admit that the status our culture affords to such characters betrays any appetite for religious faith; but maybe, just maybe, Pascal’s ‘God-shaped hole’ is still wide open.

Christmas delivers two timely truths: first, that we don’t have to settle for a pale imitation of God; and, second, that greater than our desire for his presence is his yearning to be with us. As John O’Donahue writes in Eternal Echoes: ‘Our longing is an echo of the divine longing for us. Our longing is the living imprint of divine desire.’

Jason Gardner