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The Truth behind Christmas Myths

December 07, 2024 • Marshall Davis

The Bible is filled with fantastic and miraculous tales surrounding the birth of Jesus. There are stories such as the Virgin Birth, the Roman census and the trip to Bethlehem, being turned away from the inn, necessitating Mary giving birth in a stable. There are the shepherds in the field keeping watch over their flocks by night, and the angels appearing to them and announcing the birth of the Savior. Later the magi or wise men appear, following a star until it leads them to the Christ child, after a quick side trip to Jerusalem to get directions.

Those who show up in church after Christmas Day hear the subsequent stories of the presentation of Jesus in the temple and meeting Simeon and Anna. Then there is the Slaughter of the Innocents by King Herod as he tries to murder the infant Jesus, followed by the holy family’s flight to Egypt to escape the murderous king, and their subsequent return to Nazareth. There are so many stories of Christmas. I call them the myths of Christmas.

All the Christmas myths communicate spiritual truth. These truths often get lost when we get stuck on the issue of historicity. This is the problem with literalism. People’s minds are trained to be so closed that they cannot be open to the glory of the eternal Christ in us and through us and in and through all creation. The stories of Christmas are much more profound than literalists imagine. They contain truths for all people and all religions, not just a certain class of conservative Christian who holds the right creed.

The key to enjoying the Christmas season in churches at Christmastime is to listen to the stories with an ear to the deeper meaning. As you listen to the stories, interpret them as being about spiritual Reality here and now. Not events that happened 2000 years ago. These wonderful Christmas myths communicate timeless Reality available always. That is the Truth behind the Christmas myths.

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This time of year we hear a lot of fanciful stories about Christmas. There are stories of Santa Claus and his flying reindeer, Dicken’s Christmas Carol, Frosty the Snowman, the Grinch Who Stole Christmas and It’s a Wonderful Life. But no one except for children take those stories literally. Adults do not believe there is a generous elf dressed in red residing at the North Pole, an angel named Clarence, or a green creature who lives above Whoville. No one believes a snowman can miraculously come to life.

But lots of adults literally believe in the fantastic stories of the Bible surrounding the birth of Jesus. The first of the biblical stories is the Annunciation, which is the story of the angel Gabriel appearing to Mary to announce to her that she is going to miraculously give birth to the Son of God. It is known as the Virgin Birth. Many Christians take the virgin birth literally and even make it one of the requirements for being a true Christian. It is one of the fundamentals of fundamentalism.

There are the familiar Christmas stories of the Roman census and the trip to Bethlehem, being turned away from the inn, necessitating Mary giving birth in a stable. There are the shepherds in the field keeping watch over their flocks by night, and the angels appearing to them and announcing the birth of the Savior. Later the magi or wise men appear, following a star until it leads them to the Christ child, after a quick side trip to Jerusalem to get directions.

For those who show up in church after Christmas Day there are the subsequent stories of the presentation of Jesus in the temple and meeting Simeon and Anna. Then there is the Slaughter of the Innocents by King Herod as he tries to murder the infant Jesus, followed by the holy family’s flight to Egypt to escape the murderous king, and their subsequent return to Nazareth.

There are so many stories of Christmas. I call them the myths of Christmas. I don’t mean that in a negative way. I love the myths. Myths are powerful. They communicate important spiritual truth. I preached these stories for forty years. But they did not happen. They are not historical accounts.

This is not a radical thing to say. It is what mainstream biblical scholarship says. Every preacher learns this in seminary, unless you attend a fundamentalist school. When you investigate these events as an historian would investigate any historical claim, you see there is not enough evidence to take them as fact. Supernatural events are extraordinary claims, and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and there is no such extraordinary evidence.

There is evidence for an historical Jesus, despite what a few skeptics say. But we can’t be certain where he was born. The reason the Gospel of Matthew says he was born in Bethlehem was to fulfill the Messianic prophecy of the Messiah being born in the city of David and from the lineage of King David. That is the message of the myth – that he is the Jewish Messiah. But there is no evidence of that he was born in Bethlehem. After all he was known as Jesus of Nazareth, not Jesus of Bethlehem.

Also we cannot know exactly when Jesus was born. The historical references in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke do not stand up to scrutiny. The identity of the Star of Bethlehem is unknown. There are many astronomical theories but none are convincing to me. There were no angels appearing to shepherds in the fields or wise men coming from afar to lay gold, frankincense and myrrh before a child. If these things really happened then Jesus would have been famous long before he began his ministry, but he was not.

These Christmas stories arose many years after the lifetime of Jesus. These are typical miracle stories that surround the births of all sorts of famous people in ancient history from Caesar to Buddha. They are not to be taken literally. To quote my friend, now passed away, they are to be taken literarily, not literally.

Yet many Christians think they are required to accept these stories as history. In conservative churches people are taught that if they don’t take them literally, then they don’t really believe the Bible and they are not a true Christian and their eternal salvation is in jeopardy. In other words, these Christians use spiritual blackmail to strongarm people into believing myths as historical and scientific fact.

But many preachers and churches are not conservative. I find mainline churches and preachers to be quite tolerant and educated. Yet even in progressive churches the Christmas stories are often presented as if the events that actually happened. Preachers don’t explain that there are better ways to interpret the tales. Maybe they don’t want to spoil the mood of Christmas with a dose of skepticism. They do not want to upset the childhood understanding that people learned when they were children in Sunday School.

For that reason long-time church members can retain a naive understanding of the Bible even into old age. That is the problem many of us have with churches, especially at Christmas time. A lot of people feel like they have to check their brains at the door when they walk into church. We like to go to worship and hear the old, old stories. I do anyway. But it is hard to listen to typical interpretations of the Christmas stories.

The key to surviving the Christmas myth-telling season is to move beyond literalism and find the truth behind the myths. To demythologize the stories, to use Rudolf Bultmann’s phrase. The Christmas stories are myths. Myths are true fictions. Much like the parables of Jesus, they are fictitious stories that communicate spiritual truth. The birth narratives were created long after Jesus’ lifetime by the early Church to communicate truths about Jesus using symbolic language.

For example, let’s take the Virgin Birth. There is no reason to think that such a miracle happened literally. But Virgin births were common features in ancient stories of the Middle East as well as the Far East. The Buddha was said to be born out of the side or hip or arm pit (depending on the account) of his mother in order to keep her virginity intact. Alexander the Great was born of a virgin. Julius Caesar was born of a virgin. Most importantly, because he is mentioned in the Christmas story, Caesar Augustus was born of a virgin and said to be the Son of God and Savior of the World. Sound familiar?

Virgin births were a way of exalting a person. Such a person was considered divine, born of God or a god. That the person had a divine message and authority, so people would listen to him. That is what the Biblical story of the virgin birth is saying. It is contrasting Jesus and Caesar, among other things. On another level it is also speaking symbolically of the birth of God in us. The Virgin Birth is about a spiritual birth, being born of the Divine Spirit, which is spiritual awakening to the divine nature.

The story of the shepherds tells us that this true for all people, not the spiritual or religious elite. The story of the wise men from the East is saying that Jesus’ message transcends culture and race and religion and class.

The story of Herod killing the infants of Bethlehem while trying to kill Jesus was modeled after the story of Pharaoh killing the Hebrew children. It portrays Jesus as a new Moses. The Holy Family traveling to Egypt and returning is a reenactment of the people of Israel going to Egypt and then coming back to the Promised Land. As the prophet said, “Out of Egypt I called my Son. Jesus gave the Sermon on the Mount, which echoes Moses giving the Law from the mountain.