Christmas ­ Fact or Fantasy?

The Rev John McGlashan

Camberley, UK

In this article, based on a Christmas sermon, the author first discusses the obsession with so-called facts that possesses the world in which we live. To accept the Christmas story as fact is a problem for many. We then go on to see that Christmas is a mixture of both fact and myth. The article concludes with a Liberal Catholic view.

We live in a world of facts; a world in which the communication media bombard us with facts. We are eager for facts, we are fascinated by them, we devour them. Sometimes we are repelled and disturbed by them, but still they come. Our lives are, to a large extent, dominated by this information that comes pouring out of our newspapers, radios and television sets. Most people believe what they read or hear; how could they possibly do otherwise? After all, I read it in the paper, I heard it on the nine-o'clock news, and I saw it on the television, therefore it must be true.

Some people, however, are more cautious and subject what they see or hear to critical analysis. They filter the alleged facts through the screen of their intuition, and test it against other sources of information, personal knowledge and experience. If it passes the test, then the information is generally accepted as the truth, the facts! At this time of the year, we are presented with another set of facts; facts concerning an event that had it occurred in the age of mass-media, would certainly have hit the headlines. We are familiar with that most newsworthy of stories - the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. For many people who readily accept the facts of contemporary happenings without question and accept them as "gospel," the "facts" of Christmas present a problem. Suddenly a halt must be called, and perhaps ordinary belief suspended for a time, for here we are being presented with a set of facts that seem to be of a very different order.

A different kind of fact

The birth of Jesus the Christ, surrounded by alleged mysterious happenings and visitations, signs and wonders, calls for a radically different kind of assessment from that which we normally bring to bear in analysing other forms of information. It calls for a deeper response and the activation of a more perceptive faculty.

For Christmas opens us to an entirely different kind of fact - spiritual fact, blending elements of history, myth and fantasy in such a subtly interwoven fabric that the result, if we can perceive it, results in pure FACT.

Now fact is a curious thing: despite its attraction there are those who find it difficult to face up to the raw, and sometimes unpalatable, facts of life on this planet. The cold fact of human nature at its most destructive, most exploitive and most selfish are hard to bear, and the chilling facts of our present state of scientific and technological advancement (if you like to call it that!) often inspire more discomfort than respect.

Bare facts are not enough

It is not surprising, therefore, that thousands of people turn, for their relaxation and stimulation, to reading so-called science fiction and fantasy fiction.