tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8355086750486200439.post6032374929763364816..comments2024-03-24T19:55:32.537-05:00Comments on The View from This Seat: Demythologizing Santa (and Christmas?)LKSeathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08860725174433173015noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8355086750486200439.post-49294307915846119602011-12-20T10:16:45.822-06:002011-12-20T10:16:45.822-06:00"Stories", "facts", "beli..."Stories", "facts", "beliefs", "myths", "truth".<br />In this world volatile definitions who can make a dependable claim?? But there is considerable evidence for many "facts", "theories" and "hypotheses".<br /><br />So I say, Yes, Naomi, there really was a St. Nicholas, whose day we celebrated on December 6. And as you grow up, you may find a personal belief that he alive now in the communion of saints who worship the living Christ Jesus, whose incarnation we celebrate December 25.<br /><br />Let the evidence inspire us onward to belief and a life of good deeds, much as St. Nicholas.<br /><br />Merry Christmas, Naomi!1Sojournernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8355086750486200439.post-10126459463301821842011-12-20T09:53:59.545-06:002011-12-20T09:53:59.545-06:00P.S.: I watched a children's Christmas pageant...P.S.: I watched a children's Christmas pageant last week in a Bible-believing Vineyard church that included a re-enactment of the birth of Jesus--wise men, shepherds, angels, and all--but which stopped short of showing the first family's flight into Egypt while Herod's soldiers murdered Bethlehem's children under two years of age.Antonkjacobshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01734526091623931154noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8355086750486200439.post-32736932562136981462011-12-20T09:30:41.294-06:002011-12-20T09:30:41.294-06:00Gee, Leroy, in your Christmas card to us, you also...Gee, Leroy, in your Christmas card to us, you also make strong statements about truth and falsehood. So I don't know whether to engage the argument or say, "And a Merry Christmas to you, too!" Well, how about both?<br /><br />I must say that I have a strong sympathy with your sentiments against "Lying, duplicity, or pretending myths or outright falsehoods are factual." I cringe whenever I hear a sermon that treats a biblical story/teaching as literally true when I know the preacher him/herself doesn't believe it. However, it seems to me that strongly taking this approach reflects an underlying paradigm that both religious fundamentalists and liberals share. Fundies say it's true or it's false. Libs do the same, readily jettisoning the hard-or-impossible-to-believe. I think of Thomas Jefferson's rewriting of the gospel story, deleting miracles and the supernatural. It's in this way that fundamentalists and liberals are both literalists.<br /><br />But historians of myth and religion as well as psychologists and others (Levi-Strauss, Jung, Campbell, Eliade, Bettelheim, et al.) have illuminated for us a different paradigm that values and appreciates our myths for their constructive social and psychological function in our lives, setting aside the insistence on identifying what is literally true. This paradigm, if I'm not mistaken, is also more consistent with the dominant world views in both ancient Greece and Palestine.<br /><br />So we moderns, especially we modern religious leaders (maybe parents, too, especially at Christmas time), face a kind of quandary. How do we preach, teach, nurture without always tediously reminding listeners or children that such-and-such a story is "only make-believe." Does every sermon require comments from the Bible scholars regarding what's probably true, not true, interpolated, happened, didn't happen, embellished with theology, or whatever? And how do we lead our children to make the distinction between fantasy and reality without losing an appreciation for the mystery and marvel that is life?<br /><br />I agree with you that "God was in Christ reconciling the world" to God. I wonder, though, if the way I believe it is the same way you believe it. Hm...<br /><br />Well, thanks for your posting, which obviously got me going today, and probably laid the foundations for some future column of my own. And, dear brother, I also wish you and yours a most Merry Christmas, a happy New Year, and, as one secular friend said to me: a merry everything!<br /><br />I look forward to seeing you soon.Antonkjacobshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01734526091623931154noreply@blogger.com