True meaning of Christmas is that we are bornof God

      Few words are more open to misuse andmisunderstanding than the word "myth."

      Originating from the Greek word mythos, meaninga story, it's commonly understood to describe a baseless belief. It denotesa piece of fiction, something that is not only untrue but also a sign ofnaivete on the part of anyone who takes it seriously. The Oxford EnglishDictionary reinforces this by defining it as "Purely fictitious narrativeusually involving supernatural person ..."        
       Not surprisingly, then, there's suspicion andoften open animosity on the part of many believers whenever somebody suggestthat their most sacred texts are in fact myths. It's like saying they believein fairy tales or hocus-pocus.  

     The problem here is one of enormous importance for religionstoday. It concerns the question of religious truth itself.

      For example, take the stories of Genesis or, even morerelevantly, the web of stories on which Christmas is founded. If one saysthey're myths, the "true believer" is offended because he or she assumesthat what is meant is that they are merely pious imaginings, pretty talesfor the childish Outsiders are often confused as well.

     We are faced, seemingly, with a choice: either suchstories are literally true or they are to be dismissed as pure fictional. This either-or is a  disaster for skeptics and believers alike.  Itsa failure to understand the real way in which all deepl spiritual truthsmust be told and taught.

     As Joseph Campbell insisted in his books and the now-famoustelevision interviews, the most vital aspects of our own self-understandingand our journey  through life  are best communicated by means ofmyth.  

   A myth often is a symbolic or otherwoldly telling of a truththat can only be told by means of a story. The details of such stories mayhave little basis in history. What matters is their inner essence. That canbe a truth more crucial to one's life than any factual newspaper account.

   The truth, for example, behind all the myths and stories aboutlong, hazardous journeys that abound in the traditions of all peoples andtribes - from Odysseus (Ulysses) after Troy to Pilgrim's Progress and beyond- is that each of us is on a hero's journey through the vicissitudes oflife.

    Thomas Moore, in his book The Care of the Soul,makes abundant use of the classical myths to tell us about key spiritualrealities he can describe in no opther manner.  Some myths are true,then, in a special way.

    Every year at  Christmas, articles are written aimed atidentifying the Star of Bethlehem with this or that conjunction of planetslong ago or the flaring forth of a specific supernova. This is really silliness.

    The star in Matthew is a code or mythical way of statingthat Christ's birth had enormous, even cosmic, significance. Stars are associatedin antiquity with the births and deaths of many important people . It's astandard feature of that era. As the late F.W. Beare noted in his commentaryon Matthew: "That a comet - or any kind of star - should move in such a wayas to guide travellers from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, a distance of five orsix miles, is indeed inconceivable, let alone that it should hover 'abovethe place where the child was' (that is, a single house in a specificvillage)."

     There are other mythic aspects of the birth narrativesthat are also common to the ancient telling of sacred stories. For example,the Discovery of the Child.

     We see this feature in the story of the findingof Moses in Exodus, but it's much older in Babylonian lore (the birth ofSargon I) and also Egyptian lore.  The theme of the Threat to the Childalso is familiar in the case of Sargon, of Horus (in the Osiris myth) and,of course, of Moses on whose life cycle the Gospel traditions are moreimmediately based.

    The mythos of a virgin birth is a common motif of thepast also. Dozens of examples from that period can be cited. What is reallybeing said by it has nothing to do with contradicting natural biology. Rather,the meaning lies in the truth that, whatever else this birth is, it is God'sact. It says that Jesus was being sent as the pre-eminent Agent and Wordof God. The Virgin Birth was not known to Paul, Mark, or the author of John'sGospel.

   The Christmas mythos tells us that Jesus was born of God andthat ultimately we all are too.

     Unlike him, however, the majority of us have not yetconsciously had this "Virgin Birth" or dawning in our souls as to what orwho we have been created to be.

    In the birth of every baby, the Word is "made flesh." That'sthe ultimate meaning of Christmas. A happy Christmas one and all.

Tom Harpur in Sunday Star, Toronto, Ontario, CanadaDec. 24/95