To one who said that myths were lies and therefore worthless, even though ‘breathed through silver.’ — J.R.R. Tolkien, MYTHOPOEIA

Myth is the language of the divine, the Truth wrapping himself in story, speaking to what we cannot measure or qualify. It is His way of revealing reality, the bridge between the hidden and revealed, over which we are led to live in the world with eyes of reason and imagination wide open.

To call Christmas a myth is not to dismiss it as fantasy or relegate it to irrelevance; it is to situate it within the great, living current of God’s revelation. Myths are not falsehoods. They are the truest truths, draped in symbol and story to draw us deeper into reality—not away from it.

Christmas, then, as the story of God made flesh, is the Myth of myths, the divine narrative planted in the soil of human history.

Modernity struggles with myth, mistaking it for illusion, and so Christmas becomes entangled in two lesser stories. On one hand, it is domesticated into sentimentality—a holiday of twinkling lights, consumer rituals, and a vague message about peace and goodwill. On the other, even modern Christians risk reducing Christmas to a ledger of historical facts: a census in Bethlehem, a manger in Judea, a singular point on a timeline. But the mythic nature of Christmas resists both sentimental flattening and rigid literalism. Instead, it calls us to encounter the paradox: the infinite veiled in the finite, eternity invading time, the creator cradled as an infant.

Myths are not an escape; they are a return. A return to the deep loam where human truths have always thrived, tender and untamed. They do not live in the shallow pools of factual data nor preen before the mirror of literalism. Myths speak from above and below, from the tree’s canopy and its roots, weaving their vines around the visible world, producing the hidden truths we’ve forgotten how to name. Christmas is such a myth. It demands to be read with the mind and heart, calling upon reason and imagination alike.

To lose myths is to lose the marrow of existence. We become travelers with no path, wanderers in a land flattened by the weight of numbers and measurements. The modern world, armed with its instruments, has exiled myth as if it were a relic of ignorance—yet without myth, reality withers. If reduced to mere historical chronology or sentimental cliché, Christmas becomes equally withered, drained of its wildness and wonder. Myth opens the door to truths that the sterile light of literalism cannot reveal: the meaning of God’s condescension, the grace of divine humility, and the mystery of love so vast it descends to become one of us.

Consider the opening of the Gospel of John: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. … And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” Here, we meet the essence of myth and fact embracing. The eternal Word does not merely visit; He takes on flesh, becoming part of the creation He formed. This is not a dry historical statement; it is poetry, mythic in its rhythm, brimming with cosmic weight. To hear it properly, we must step into its symbolic and theological depths, allowing its truth to reshape our view of reality.

This myth, like all true myths, is rooted in paradox. It tells us of a virgin birth—a truth that confounds biology. It gives us the image of an infinite God confined to a manger, the King of kings, lying helpless in a feeding trough. The savior is announced to shepherds, the lowest of workers, under a night sky that fills with angelic songs. Nothing in this story conforms to what we might expect, yet every detail pulses meaningfully. The birth of Christ does not dissolve into symbolism; it deepens through it. Myth becomes incarnate.

To call Christmas a myth is not to dismiss its historical reality but to elevate our understanding of it. Jesus Christ was born in time and space—in Bethlehem, during the reign of Caesar Augustus, to a virgin named Mary. But that is only part of the story. Christmas does not rest on facts alone. It is, above all, the unveiling of a cosmic truth: that the eternal God stepped into the limits of time and space, entering human history not with fanfare but in obscurity. Myth alone can carry such mystery; it speaks not only to what happened but to what it means—and continues to mean.

Modern men wander like those who’ve torn up their oaks for lumber, their fields bare and unyielding. But myths—myths are the forest, making us evergreen and alive. Christmas brings us back to the grove of living truth, where symbols intertwine with facts and imagination nourishes reason. It invites us to reclaim a vision of reality where the sacred saturates the mundane, where God’s presence upends every assumption.

If we look at Christmas only through the eyes of sentimentality, we risk reducing it to a fleeting feeling. If we approach it only through the lens of cold literalism, we strip it of its wonder. But to embrace Christmas as a myth is to stand in awe before the story of God’s love—a love so profound it chose vulnerability, smallness, and flesh. Myth keeps Christmas alive, not as a relic of the past, but as the Truth continually breaking into the present, shaping us, renewing us.

This Christmas, we can hear the story anew again. We can take it in not only with our minds but with our imaginations, tracing the contours of a God who becomes small, entering a world that has long forgotten him.

Christmas is a myth—the Myth that redeems all others, calling us back to the deep loam of Truth, evergreen and alive.