The Mythology of Christmas

Longtime readers of this blog know that I was formerly part of a religious tradition that rejected the celebration/observance of Christmas. We believed that it was inappropriate for Christians to embrace beliefs/traditions/practices that were clearly pagan in origin and had little or no foundation in Scripture. After leaving that tradition, it became clear to me that I had fundamentally misunderstood both the holiday and the issues surrounding it. In short, my rejection of the mythology and substance of Christmas was based on incomplete and inaccurate information.

As I contemplated writing this post, I came across an article written by Mr Vexen Crabtree back in 2014. I found "The Birth of Jesus and the Christmas Story Pagan and Unhistorical" to be an excellent vehicle to discuss the mythology which underpins this popular holiday. For those who are interested, you may read the article in its entirety at The Human Truth Foundation or this link:
http://www.vexen.co.uk/religion/christianity_birthnarrative.html

The thing that I found most interesting/appealing about Crabtree's article is that it largely ignores the trappings of the modern celebration of Christmas and focuses on the very scriptures which Christians use to justify their observance of the holiday. Instead of discoursing on the pagan origins of Christmas trees and Yule logs, he attacked various aspects of the actual nativity stories recorded in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. In other words, he skips the trimmings and goes directly to the heart of the matter! After all, Christians would be hard-pressed to deny that their Scriptures record these two stories about the birth of Christ!

Crabtree wrote: "These two accounts contradict each other in many places. Many elements are certainly untrue. There are no Roman records attesting to the birth (or life) of Jesus. Events such as King Herod's killing of every male child simply did not occur - none of Herod's enemies mention it, for example, despite their routine documenting of his many misdeeds of a much lesser nature. Also unhistorical is the curious Roman census that required (for what reason?) everyone to go to cities associated with their ancestors. But similar stories are found about previous pagan god-man saviors. Likewise with the Virgin Birth, which has now been shown to simply be a mistranslation deriving from the Septuagint. And what of the 3 wise men who follow the bright star to Jesus's birthplace, bearing gifts? Other star gazers of the time, who meticulously recorded many stellar events, did not notice it. It is a Zoroastrian story, even down to the details of the 3 gifts, copied by Christians and made to be about Jesus. The stories of Jesus's birth are rewrites, modernisations, of previous stories from older pagan myths. These facts have led some scholars to cast doubt on Jesus's entire existence."

In the article, Crabtree pointed out (like Richard Dawkins before him) that the gospels were written several years after Christ's death and that the authors of these accounts simply did not know much about the actual details of Christ's origins (and there wasn't anybody who still had first-hand knowledge of those events to ask). Instead, the men who wrote those gospels turned to the Hebrew Scriptures and pagan mythology to create a suitable narrative about those origins (e.g. the messiah had to come from Bethlehem, so Jesus must have been born there and the Zoroastrian story of the three magi). As a consequence, there are numerous historical inaccuracies and adopted pagan mythologies present in the accounts of Matthew and Luke.

Although I found myself agreeing with many of the points that Crabtree was making, I was reminded of my own experiences with this subject and with the experiences of others which I had observed, read or heard about it over the years. This prompted me to ask again some of the same questions that had arisen when I had left my previous affiliation many years ago. Questions like: Why do people believe what they believe? What makes something true or false? Why do people create mythologies and tell origin stories? Do those mythologies and stories serve a legitimate purpose? Is an understanding of the evolution of thinking on a given subject essential to a "true" or proper understanding of that subject?

I found myself relating to something that Dennis Diehl had recently contributed to the blog Banned by HWA! He said: "As one of the Three Wise Men in the Christmas Play, I so wanted this story to be true.  Choirs of singing Angels out and about praising God in the Highest to a few lone shepherds seemed pretty amazing.  I did wonder why they didn't perform for the whole town but was told not to ask questions like that again.  I couldn't figure out how a virgin could give  birth and stay a virgin or how God could be the father with out...well you know. But later on learned that Mary was really with child by the Holy Spirit, so that must be God's power that did it. Then someone said the Holy Spirt was the Third Person in the Trinity of the One True God but three.  Huh?  That sounded ever much more kinky I stopped asking questions.  But it was all a grand mystery and who cared. I wanted it all to be true." http://armstrongismlibrary.blogspot.com/2018/12/i-wanted-it-all-be-true.html I suspect that I'm not the only one who can relate to what Mr Diehl shared about his own experiences and feelings in this instance - which gets me back to some of those questions.

Mythologies and origin stories were created by people who were subject to the same kinds of experiences, thoughts, feelings and emotions that you and I have. They were/are an attempt to answer the questions (why, when, where, how, etc.) that we have about ourselves, each other and the world around us. They were/are an attempt to understand and explain. They were/are an attempt to formulate a rationale for what we are experiencing. As such, the authors of our mythologies and origin stories have never been very concerned with actual people, events or places. Instead, they seek to answer the fundamental questions and to reveal eternal truths (e.g. god(s) as the creator, first cause, source or mover).

When we remind ourselves of these things, the act of borrowing from former mythologies or appealing to an older or recognized authority like the Hebrew Scriptures) becomes more understandable and defensible. Approached from this perspective, things like the exact date or year of Christ's birth are not important. Likewise, it becomes unimportant to us whether he was actually born in the time of Herod the Great or during the governorship of Quirinius. In the end, the essential question is "Do I accept Jesus as the promised Messiah of the Hebrew Scriptures?"

And, if one does accept that Jesus is the Christ (and some of us believe we have good reason to do so), then the inconsistencies, errors and plagiarism of the men who sought to explain his origins does not seem so significant. Moreover, the fact that early Christians sought to explain and embellish the people and events which they had experienced in real time makes us more amenable to the notion that their stories and mythologies have a basis in fact/reality.

For Christians, these narratives about the origin of Christ seek to explain some fundamental truths: That Jesus came from God to save a weary and troubled people from sin, fear, disease and death - that He was the fulfillment of God's promises to Abraham, Moses and David - that He came to bring us peace, tolerance and love - that His arrival was worthy of universal acclaim - that it was the most important event in human history - and very worthy of the notice of emperors, kings, governors, magi and shepherds alike - and that it was a great honor for the mother who bore him.

For Christians, the fact that people before them had noticed the special relationship between a mother and her child should not be regarded with amazement or disdain. Likewise, the fact that others before them may have noted the irony that life presents to us in the reality that many of the women who have cared for and nurtured infant sons down through the eons of time have had those sons grow up to save or rescue them from some peril should not trouble or dissuade them from accepting Jesus and his story. Even at this distant date, it is not hard to imagine folks wanting to acknowledge God's greatest gift to us with gifts of their own to Him!

I know all too well, however, that many of the folks who read this will continue to be preoccupied with pagan influences, technical errors and inconsistencies. That is unfortunate. Even so, I have no problem wishing the rest of my readers a very Merry Christmas and rejoicing with them in the words attributed to angels so long ago: "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men!"