DECEMBER 12, 2024 – Ever since Prometheus gave fire to humankind, our ancestors have sat around the campfire telling stories. It stands to reason: human speech preceded human writing—and presumably cave paintings—by a good number of millennia, and there’s no more powerful agent than a crackling fire in the pit and glowing embers off to the side to fire up the imagination in the moment.
Yet even well into historic times, defined by the advent of writing, we’ve passed on information and traditions as much by oral expression as by writing. Two of the most famous works of Ancient Greek literature, The Iliad and The Odyssey, for example, were perpetuated by oral story-telling. Each time the story was told, Homer—or Homers[1]—added a bit more spin, a little more color, until the details of the Trojan War and the travels and travails of Odysseus were eventually immortalized—and mythologized—in writing. Then came the translations from Ancient Greek to numerous other languages since, including hundreds of versions in English alone. Myriad adjustments were made over this march of repetition.
Then we have the Bible—let’s make that Bibles in countless languages, editions, translations—consisting of The Law, The Word and a whole raft of stories, from the Creation story to the legend of the flood to the fish tale of a guy named Jonah being swallowed by a whale and on to the parables about Jesus. These stories followed a trajectory similar to what occurs in every long-standing culture: oral story-telling around both real and figurative campfires that is eventually transformed into writing that continues to evolve. This process produced the Christmas Story, as told in Luke and Matthew, and doubtless the story of St. Nick, or at least its meaning, is metaphorically present throughout the Gospels.
Myth, story, legend, hocus-pocus—call it whatever you wish—the story of St. Nicholas and his successor, Santa Claus, is every bit as real to me as is the traditional Christmas Story, as that legend has been conjured, embellished, depicted, and perpetuated over the centuries by artists, composers, clerical shepherds and their flocks, and leveraged for lucre by entrepreneurs large and small. If at a rational level I recognize the distinction between myth and reality, I also appreciate the essential role that culture has assigned to the former in order to grapple with the latter.
Call me old fashioned; call me white, gray, male and sentimental, but I’ve always loved hearing, telling, reading, and watching Christmas stories, from the version that appears in Luke and Matthew to the collection of secular Christmas stories that came out of the attic with the ornament boxes every December when I was growing up. In aggregate these stories and the spirit of generosity, forbearance, and good cheer that such fables convey, are critical for our understanding of ourselves. Plus, stories of this season framed by age-old pagan traditions, from the role of der Tannenbaum and to place of mistletoe, inject hope, light, warmth and good cheer into the darkest time of the year—at least in more northern climes.
It is fair sport to wonder how the Christmas Story and stories will age over the next couple of millennia. If The Illiad and The Odyssey are reliable guides, I’d say quite well, thank you very much. After all, we need “the Story and stories” to keep our spirits up—and that’s no myth.
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© 2024 by Eric Nilsson
[1] Scholarship is divided as to whether Homer was an individual or a collection of ancient bards.
