Christmas movies have always tested the line between spirituality and schmaltz, between pious sentiments and crowd-pleasing entertainment. Who can forget how Jim Carrey camped it up in Ron Howard's chintzy adaptation of Dr. Suess's moralistic How the Grinch Stole Christmas? This year's batch includes the usual family movies (Cheaper by the Dozen 2), musicals (Rent), and noirish crime stories set oh-so-ironically during this time of good cheer (The Ice Harvest). But the stakes may be higher than usual this year when Disney releases The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe on December 9.

The film has all the right seasonal ingredients: lots of snow, young actors, an epic battle between good and evil, and even an appearance by Father Christmas himself. It is also based on a popular work of British fantasy, just like the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings movies that recently have dominated the multiplex at this time of year.

But it also brings an unusually intense religious element to this year's holiday-movie slate. The story, written by Christian apologist C.S. Lewis, includes a scene of death and resurrection that has prompted some observers to call the movie "The Passion for kids". And the film comes out at a time when most Hollywood studios are aggressively courting the Christian market, hoping to achieve the same box-office success that Mel Gibson had.

Murray Stiller, a film instructor at Capilano College who is studying art and theology at Regent College at UBC, says the studios would be "crazy" not to pursue the church crowd. "They've got to work a little more hard at the Christian market because it tends to be a little more exclusive or to keep a barrier around itself, especially in the southern states. But I don't know that the movie is for exclusively Christian audiences. I would say all great movies are for all audiences."

Stiller says last year's The Polar Express, which promoted a vague, generic form of "belief", is an example of how Hollywood tries to appeal to everyone in general and no one in particular when it flirts with the religious aspects of the season. "They're very conservative that way," he says. "If you're making movies, you've got to go for the money, and you make money by not offending people."

Peter Elliott, dean of Christ Church Cathedral and a former film critic for the Anglican Journal, says the films released at this time of year often tap into the religious vibe surrounding the Christmas season even if they aren't explicitly religious. "I think they're always looking for the feel-good themes at Christmas time," he says. "I remember when Close Encounters of the Third Kind came out at Christmas [in 1977], and it was dealing with themes of transcendence, that things mysterious are revealed, and this is kind of what Christmas is about: the mystery of God becomes known in Jesus. So that kind of theme, and themes about gift and about wonder, have regularly been trotted out, from Miracle on 34th Street right on through."

Elliott, who sits on the Vancouver International Film Festival's board of directors, says the current crop of fantasy films seems to be popular because they provide an escape from the real world, compared to the up-close visions of death and disaster that 1990s hits like Saving Private Ryan and Titanic brought to the big screen. However, Elliott-noting that Narnia will reportedly begin with a sequence depicting the bombing of London during the Second World War-says audiences never leave the real world all that far behind.

"The bombing of London could be the bombing of anywhere, any major metropolitan city-let's call it Baghdad," he says. "And the kind of safety and escape, the retreat into an imaginary world where you may discover even deeper truths about what it means to be human and what the human journey is all about. You find it more in imagination than you do in reflection on 'reality'."

Elliott says he'd like to see a greater variety of religious themes explored on the big screen at this time of year, and he cites Deepa Mehta's Water as one of his recent favourites. "I think it's a dangerous thing if the holiday season is dominated by only Christian images and the Christian story. Not that it's inappropriate for filmmakers to make films with the Christian story-not at all, absolutely-but it can feed into a sort of unconscious assumption that December 25 is a religious day for everybody all around the world. And it isn't."

Trevor Carolan, author of several books on eastern spirituality and an instructor at University College of the Fraser Valley, says there is nothing new about studios hyping a film's religious themes. He notes that they used to do that all the time in the 1950s and 1960s when releasing classic epics like The Robe or The Greatest Story Ever Told. Interest in those films faded as people grew increasingly disenchanted with religious institutions, but Carolan says movies now give people "a way to tap into their faith without going to church".

If anything, he says, Christians may have been inspired to express themselves-as artists and as audiences-by the series of glossy historical epics with Buddhist themes that Hollywood produced during the 1990s, such as Little Buddha, Kundun, and Seven Years in Tibet. "We've seen a number of cases in recent years where Buddhists have done what Christians are shy about doing, which is public expression of their faith. And I think it kind of emboldens Christians to make more public declarations of their faith," he says.

These films, Carolan adds, have stimulated a flowering of smaller, independent films that have made the leap from Asia to North America, such as The Cup and Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter”¦ and Spring. "Interest in Buddhism has morphed," he says. "I think North American Buddhists, we've had a very enjoyable last few years, and that has also opened up a secondary market, and we're beginning to get some of these other splendid films now."

Beyond that, Carolan says Buddhists can enthusiastically endorse the themes expressed in A Christmas Carol and all the heart-thawing stories that have followed its formula. "It's that whole idea of compassion....Finally Scrooge comes around, looking after Tiny Tim and that family, and he goes through this kind of conversion to become kindly, and that seems to be at the root of many of the great religions."

The non-Christian religious holiday most frequently associated with the winter season is the Jewish festival of lights, Hanukkah. But apart from the occasional comedy-such as Adam Sandler's 2002 lowbrow animated Eight Crazy Nights or Adam Goldberg's 2003 superhero spoof, The Hebrew Hammer-this particular holiday doesn't surface in all that many films.

Katharine Hamer, editor of the Vancouver-based Jewish Independent, says this is partly because the holiday itself is not that big a deal to Jews and partly because films that touch on Jewish or Israeli themes, such as the Kabbalah-influenced Bee Season, already come out so often throughout the year. "Hanukkah is not really as big a holiday in the Jewish calendar as Christmas is in the Christian calendar," she says. "From my perspective, Christmas is like anything else commercial, really: it's an opportunity for the studios to cash in."

Imtiaz Popat, an Ismaili filmmaker and broadcaster with Co-op Radio, says Muslims and Hindus often turn to the South Asian theatres for films that celebrate the values common to both religions, especially around the latter half of year, when Muslims celebrate Id al-Fitr-the feast that marks the end of Ramadan-and Hindus celebrate Diwali.

"They're about goodness and celebration and things like that, and they have an Id or Diwali theme to them, but not necessarily so," Popat says. "They're just timed for the holidays, because that's when people go and see movies."

One recent film that passed through the Raja Cinemas was Muhammad: The Last Prophet, an animated biopic directed, oddly enough, by Mormon cartoonist Richard Rich. "There are so many Muslims in North America now, and we go and see these Christian epics, and we would appreciate it if people went and saw these films and had a better understanding of who we are," Popat says.

So how does he approach a film like The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe? "I love The Chronicles of Narnia!" he says. "I may not see it, but there are some amazing messages in there. Christians may see Christianity in there, but I see very Muslim themes in there. The lion has some very strong significance as a symbol of God in Muslim mythology, and Aslan represents that. Religion is such that different people might see it differently, and I don't know if Lewis was mixing messages or intended to reach different belief systems, but it's there.