** spoiler alert ** Any Terry Pratchett book is all but guaranteed to deliver a good time, and this one did not disappoint on that front. But it also got my gears turning, in some familiar and unfamiliar ways. As usual, the action switches between several sets of characters, and that in itself can be a challenge to keep up with. But it also raised an interesting question of the role of belief in the human psyche.

Death, one of the main characters, is constantly trying to understand humanity. When the Hogfather (who bears a striking resemblance to Santa Claus) is...deleted, shall we say, from human belief, Death is determined to hold his place. He ties on a beard, and does a skeletal version of Santa, a la Jack Skellington (who had not yet been put on film when this book was written). He says somewhere near the end that "little lies", like the Hogfather and the Tooth Fairy, pave the ways for bigger lies that humans need to believe in, like Justice and Mercy. Hmm. That's one to chew on for a while. Are those things lies? If not, why are they so often absent? Are they essential to humanity?

It was a very interesting line of thinking to me, that belief in things like mercy & justice followed from belief in things like Santa & the Tooth Fairy. Personally, I had always made the connection between Santa & God...someone who is benevolent yet never-seen, who exists via faith & belief. And for that reason, I've found the idea of Santa to potentially be a primer for a crisis of faith.

A highly recommended seasonal read, and for a bonus, there's a great Hogfather movie on Netflix Watch Instantly. I'm only a third through that, but so far it has clarified some of the initial, confusing action in the plot.