I don't know if you have ever browsed through the sci-fi and fantasy section of your local W H Smith's [a UK newsagency chain ­ Ed]. It is very revealing indeed. There, in fictionalised form, in the guise of folk heroes and heroines, quasi-divine and immortal beings, nameless monsters, miraculous events, evil personified in distorted humanoid shapes, magic kingdoms, castles, vast, beautiful and awesome landscapes - we have almost the entire machinations of the collective unconscious revealed.

You see ... bare facts are not enough: the human psyche demands something more satisfying. Some of these contemporary published works of fantasy are very close to being of deep spiritual significance; the works of J R Tolkein and C S Lewis spring to mind. True religion has always recognised that the element of myth and fantasy is essential to spiritual communication, and a study of world religions will reveal the validity of this.

Despite the ghastly commercialism of the Christmas season, the excesses, the so-called "good living," a curious sense of the numinous breaks through here and there. There is, underlying all the crass and indulgent, a curious and niggling sense of "something other;" forgotten and ignored at the conscious level perhaps, but there, somewhere on the fringes of consciousness nevertheless. So much so that, in the cities, even the drunks and the revellers sometimes feel a strange compulsion to attend Midnight Mass, shuffling uncomfortably at the back of the churches and trying to experience something of the real Christmas.

The underlying myth breaks through the outer husk of conventional social and religious attitudes and speaks to those who are struggling to hear. There is a deep-seated faculty in us all that responds sympathetically and powerfully when the conditions are favourable, and it never fails to surprise us or gratify us. When we find ourselves introduced to a certain kind of environment or ambience, a season of the spirit, we are aware of a resonance somewhere in the depths of our being. We may be reluctant to put a nametag to it, or to categorise it or even to talk about it, so utterly intimate does it seem. But it is a faculty with which we are blessed and it operates at varying levels of intensity, and changes according to our spiritual state, our perceptions and our needs.

At Christmas-time, many people discover, or rediscover, that faculty; it stirs and awakens. The age-old, familiar set of symbols of which the Christmas story is composed, speak assuredly and powerfully, to us. But what do they speak to us of? Are we dealing with fact or fantasy? Is the story of the birth of Jesus true as given, or is it a myth, a fantasy, something dredged up ages ago from the hidden recesses of the collective unconsciousness, dressed up and presented as historical fact?

The answer is, in short, that Christmas consists of both fact and fantasy or, more correctly, myth. In studies of world religion and mythology, we are sometimes presented with the hypothesis that myth and fantasy have been superimposed upon historical events, the lives of religious teachers and so on, embroidering, re-colouring and re-shaping them, overlaying the original basic facts with a rich patina of symbolism which was not originally intended.

There are critics of Christianity, theologians and historians, who promote this point of view, that the essential facts of Christianity are so unreliable, so incapable of verification by the accepted standards and methods of historical analysis, that they can only be judged as so many stories - helpful, instructive, rich in moral and social guidelines, but of little real value when it comes down to religion which, after all, has to be factual and historical, otherwise how could we possibly have use for it? This devaluing and demythologising of religion is destructive and de-spiritualising. The bare bones and stark facts of the resulting social gospel of Christianity fail to satisfy the spiritual longing which many people are currently experiencing and has much to do with the Western world's spiritual crisis. Is it any wonder that the masses lose themselves in the alternative world of fantasy fiction?

Liberal Catholic insights

The Liberal Catholic Church draws much of its insight and inspiration from the ancient wisdom tradition. It is a tradition that puts myth, fantasy and historical fact into a workable perspective. It doesn't agree that basic Christianity has been overlaid with a film of superficial myth and legend. On the contrary, it maintains that myth and fantasy came first, arising, first of all, within the consciousness of man as archetypal thoughts generated by the gradual evolution of consciousness and spiritual cognition.