Myth Became Fact
Christmas 2023
December 24th and 25th, 2023
Fr. Tim Nunez
May my spoken word be true to God’s written word and bring us all closer to the living word, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
What is your favorite Christmas movie or show? One of my favorites is Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, the old stop-action one starring Burl Ives as the snowman who narrates the story. I love the characters: Yukon Cornelius, the prospector looking for silver and gold, the Island of Misfit Toys, and my favorite, the Bumble. (Bumbles bounce!) I love the music.
And I love the story. Rudolph and Hermy, the elf who wants to be a dentist, are outcasts who wind up not only proving themselves but bringing everyone to appreciate each other and remind everyone of what they call “the true meaning of Christmas,” which is apparently something like giving and compassion.
That is, of course, NOT the true meaning of Christmas. If that were true, it would be called something like Givingmas or Compassionmas. (The true meaning of Christmas is the wonder-full joy of God sending his only son to redeem the world from sin and death.)
And, of course, the characters and story in Rudolph are entirely fictitious. There are no such things as talking reindeer or flying reindeer or one with a glowing red nose, no talking and walking snowman, no Hermey, no Yukon Cornelius, no Bumble, no Island of Misfit Toys, no flying lion. I’d better stop there because I do not want to get into trouble.
So, if this story is wrong about the true meaning of Christmas and filled with fictional characters, why have I loved it since I was a small child? Why did Meg and I try to make sure our children saw it and grandchildren see it and love it as much as we do? Because so much of it is true, deeply true, and conveyed in such a delightful and imaginative way and with memorable music.
What is true in it? We all feel like outcasts at times. We all have hopes and dreams. We all have to strike out on our own and contend with the unknown obstacles in our path. We all know the value of good company on a hard road. We all want a shot at redemption and, when it comes down to it, we find love driving our hardest decisions. We know the misfits need love, too, and they need a place to be among people who love them. And, by the way, outcasts are misfits, too. And in helping make those connections, we find some measure of redemption. Giving and compassion deeply reflect love, and isn’t love the very best thing? With a little wisdom, love points us to Jesus himself. A lot of the elements in that story echo Jesus. And, therefore, those elements are good, right and true.
We find that the only truth in the story are the ideas that it conveys.
Likewise, we find a great many stories hold timeless truths in them, whether or not they are fictional or interpretations of historic events. Any story we truly love will have deep truths buried in it, be it Aesop’s Fables, fairy tales, mythologies or novels. C.S. Lewis went so far as to say all stories are true, by which he meant they convey elements of truth, either for good things to strive for or ill things to reject as well as discerning between the two.
This is the power of myth. And it is beyond even truth. Myths point to reality of which truth is an element, along with meaning, purpose, direction and more. Lewis wrote in an essay called Myth Became Fact, “Myth is the mountain whence all the different steams arise which become truths down here in the valley…or, if you prefer, myth is the isthmus which connects the peninsular world of thought with that vast continent we really enjoy belonging to. It is not, like truth, abstract; nor is it, like direct experience, bound to the particular.”[1]
Now let us turn to our Christmas story. It has all the elements of a great myth; angelic heralds, divine conception, a young mother and faithful adoptive father, unimaginable greatness of Our Savior, our Messiah, our Christ, in a lowly manger.
And what we find in that manger is the Incarnation, which transcends mere myth. This time the myth has become fact. The Word of God through whom he created everything is made flesh. This baby is the embodiment in a human being of the very person of the One true God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in that manger. On a particular day and at a particular time and in a particular place, in a particular moment in history, faith, hope and love along with every attribute we can grasp and those we cannot yet grasp in God’s being is Emmanuel, God is with us, in a way he had never been before.
Jesus is a real, historical person who will walk and breathe, teach and preach, heal and forgive, then be crucified under Pontius Pilate. The fact that Jesus lived, died and rose from the dead does not diminish the myth, the great truth and reality of his story. It underscores and confirms his utter reliability and superiority over all other truths, all other glimpses of God’s revelations to his people.
Lewis puts it better than I ever could. “For this is the marriage of heaven and earth: Perfect Myth and Perfect Fact; claiming not only our love and our obedience, but also our wonder and delight, addressed to the savage, the child and the poet in each one of us no less than the moralist, the scholar and the philosopher.”[2]
What is most real about Jesus? Is it the wonderful lessons we glean from his character and demonstrations of God’s love? Is it his teaching on how we can and ought to love God and love our neighbors? Or is it that he was a real person in history? Thanks be to God we get both. We get all of it, all of him. We get to love both his divinity and his humanity. We get to wonder about the ways his story defines reality and the reality of Jesus himself. And we get to embrace the story of Jesus and the fact of Jesus as he embraces the story of us and the fact of us.
Merry Christmas!
AMEN
[1] C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock, Eerdmans 1970, p.66
[2] Ibid p. 67