When people talk about purity culture today, they usually mean a very specific evangelical (often free church) youth culture—especially in the US—with ideals of abstinence, rules of modesty, and the promise that abstinence leads to moral security. Alongside this, there is another, more Catholic strand: Mary as a model of chastity and “purity.” The two are not the same – but both can have the same effect: shame becomes a technique for controlling female sexuality.
Purity culture: purity as discipline, shame as a tool
Purity culture often works not with open prohibitions, but with internal barriers. Anyone who feels desire should immediately ask themselves whether they are “still right.” Thus, purity is not experienced as a spiritual attitude, but as constant self-monitoring. The body becomes a risk, closeness a test, lust something that must have immediate consequences.
Mary as an ideal: when dignity is linked to desexualization
Marian devotion and Marian imagery are historically anchored primarily in Catholicism (and Orthodox Christianity). Culturally, this can give rise to an interpretation in which “dignified” femininity is linked to untouchedness. This becomes problematic when dignity is only accorded when sexuality disappears from the picture. Then it is not the person who is respected, but an ideal that makes the body as silent as possible.
Christmas as an amplifier
Christmas is a celebration of body images: family, tradition, roles. During this time, many experience a return to comments, glances, and expectations—especially where “decency” is a silent family norm. And when religious motifs are added, the body quickly becomes a carrier of meaning: right/wrong, pure/impure, good/wild. Shame is rarely vocal in this context. It is usually taken for granted.
A counter-image from the nativity scene: physicality without armor
The nativity scene in particular provides an image that can be interpreted as opposing shame: a body that does not have to be “earned.” The nakedness of the baby Jesus is not erotic, but it is unprotected, real, without social armor. A body that does not have to prove anything to be worthy. As a literary motif, this can become a counterpoint to the logic of purity: it is not concealment that creates dignity, but the recognition that physicality is part of being human.
Don’t interpret shame, observe it
Shame is dramaturgically powerful – because it immediately produces conflict. But the benefit arises when the text treats shame not as “truth,” but as a learned reaction: as muscle tension, as a thought loop, as a reflex that can be observed. Without moral interpretation, shame becomes material – and the character gains room for maneuver: they can examine whether the feeling belongs to them or whether it was taught to them.
Three practical levers:
- Describe shame as a physical reaction
Not “she was wrong,” but: dry mouth, hot throat, hands on the hem, a glance at the door, the memory of a sentence from the youth group. - Describe the body concretely, without judgment
Skin, warmth, breath, pressure, moisture, hardness, trembling—without praise, without devaluation. This takes away the moral glamour of shame and makes it something that can come and go. - Use Christmas motifs as a framework for tension
Candlelight, the smell of pine, wrapping paper, voices from the living room, the fear of being discovered: this is not decoration, but an amplifier. Closeness becomes a stake.
And a scene that sits right at this junction shows how this can look on the page: a young woman is not “against” tenderness – she is for closeness. But a second system runs parallel within her: the practiced self-control that immediately translates closeness into guilt. The text doesn’t need to comment on this. It’s enough to make it precisely visible.
Example scene: “The Promise”
She was nineteen, Jonah twenty—old enough to make their own legal decisions, and young enough that every decision still felt like a test. In two days, she would be back in her dorm. Today was Christmas Eve at her parents’ house, and the house smelled of gravy, oranges, and the wax of the candles her mother always lit on this one evening, as if there were a special liturgy for it.
After dinner, they had sneaked “upstairs” for a moment – not secretly in the sense of forbidden, but rather in the sense of: not explained.
The guest room was the only one in the house that could be locked from the inside. She had turned the key quietly and immediately listened for sounds: footsteps downstairs, the clinking of dishes, her father murmuring as he played a Christmas playlist in the living room.
Jonah sat next to her on the bed, the bedspread still neat, as if they were showing respect for the room. A string of warm white lights hung in the window, and a bag of gift ribbon lay on the chair because she had been rewrapping presents earlier. Everything in this room said: family is close. Too close.
She wore a thick sweater over a thin blouse, too much fabric for what she was feeling inside. The ring she had gotten at summer camp sparkled on her finger—a narrow silver band that sometimes felt like a promise and sometimes like a clamp.
“Come here,” Jonah said softly. No tension in his voice, no rush. His hand lay open on the blanket between them, as if touch were something offered, not taken.
She moved closer, and the sweater slipped off her shoulder. Beneath it, her bra strap stretched tight. The warmth of his body through the fabric alone made her stomach react: a tug, a small throb, as if her body understood faster than her head.
Jonah raised his hand and brushed a strand of hair behind her ear. His fingertips grazed her neck, just below her jaw. Her skin responded immediately: a shiver, fine and fast, that ran down to her sternum.
In her head, the practiced voice sprang to life, familiar as a refrain: Be careful. Boundaries. Stay pure. Don’t start what you can’t finish…
The sentence never ended cleanly. It ended in images: tears in the bathroom, the face of her youth leader, the sentence “You can’t hold back”, as if she were a package that had been opened and then thrown away.
Jonah kissed her. First briefly, tentatively. Then longer. She felt his breath, the pressure of his lips, and her own mouth opened without her deciding to. Her hands found his neck; under her fingers, warm hair, skin, tension.
Then Jonah put his hand on her waist, under the hem of her sweater, and touched skin. Just skin. His thumb stroked the soft spot above her hip bone once.
Her body responded with a clarity that embarrassed her: her nipples hardened, pressing against her bra. Her breathing became irregular. She felt warmth and wetness between her labia, so sudden that her head lagged behind for a moment.
She didn’t break the kiss, but she tensed. Jonah noticed immediately. He paused, without letting go of her, just with a little distance, so that she had to look at him.
“Hey,” he said. “You’re somewhere else right now.”
She laughed briefly, too high. “I… I want you. But I also want—”
She didn’t finish the sentence because the second want always sounded like betrayal: I also want to be good. I also don’t want to be the one they talk about later…
Someone laughed downstairs, probably her sister. Footsteps in the hallway, then silence again. Her heart beat faster, not just because of Jonah. Also because of the door.
Jonah followed her gaze. “Are you afraid they’ll come in?”
“They knock,” she said automatically—and realized how thin that sounded. In her mind, she could already see her mother standing at the door with a basket of fresh towels, friendly, surprised, too friendly because she was surprised.
Jonah looked at her ring. Not mockingly. Not as evidence. Just attentively.
“Is that the part that yells at you?” he asked.
She nodded, and suddenly it was worse because he said it so calmly. Because it wasn’t against him, but against her—against something inside her that felt like a strange voice living in her own mouth.
“When I keep going,” she said, “it feels like I’m breaking myself.”
She hated the image because she knew it was a lie—and because she believed it anyway.
Jonah ran his thumb over her knuckles. “Then we won’t go any further,” he said. “Or we’ll only go as far as you’re still with us.” “
That was the worst part. Not pressure, not temptation—but respect. He left her no excuse to blame him. The decision remained hers.
She breathed in, slowly. Felt her body: the tension in her thighs, the warmth between her legs, the hard points of her nipples, the pulse in her neck. None of it was moral. It was just presence.
Downstairs, a Christmas carol began, a voice singing of peace as if peace could simply be turned on. Then she heard the clatter of cutlery again, a cupboard being closed, the muffled voices of her parents, as if the house had its own way of calling her back.
“Stay,” she whispered—not sure if she was asking Jonah or herself. Then she put her hand on his forearm, firmly enough that it was a decision, and said, “Slow down. And… if I drift away again, you tell me.”
Jonah nodded. “I’m here.”
And for a moment, the promise on her finger wasn’t gone—but it wasn’t the only thing that defined her either.
Purity Culture shows how effective shame is when it doesn’t come from outside, but runs alongside as an inner voice. In the scene, it’s not “morality” versus “lust,” but a body that reacts unambiguously—and a mind that immediately translates that reaction into risk, loss, guilt. This is precisely where the literary lever lies: those who observe shame rather than interpret it make it legible as a learned system. And those who describe physicality in concrete and non-judgmental terms remove the aura of the unspeakable from this system.
Christmas as a setting
Christmas is an ideal setting for this because closeness is always ambiguous here: warmth and control coexist. The house, the parents, the traditions—everything heightens the stakes. But it is precisely in this confined space of resonance that a text can show that self-determination does not arise in grand manifestos, but in small decisions: slowly, consciously, at one’s own pace—with the right to pause at any time.
And sometimes that begins with not judging one’s own body, but simply perceiving it.