We have a great American society, don’t we? We have freedom of religion. We have freedom of expression. We have great medical care available to most. We have more wealth per capita in greater numbers than anywhere else on this planet. We have a marvelous system of education. We have religions which gives us faith, spiritual sustenance and direction in life. We have deeply enjoyable festivals: Valentine’s Day, Saint Patrick’s Day, Easter, the Fourth of July, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Day. We also have many national holidays: President’s Day, Memorial Day, Labor Day, Martin Luther King Day. We are blessed. We should deeply appreciate these holidays and celebration; rightfully so. We should rejoice in Christ our Savior, the Christmas birth story, Santa Claus, The Tooth Fairy, The Easter Bunny, Mistletoe, St. Patrick’s Elves, grinning pumpkins and all of the other colorful aspects of these festivals. They add spice, color and pleasure to our lives.
We often think of our society as being stable and founded on rational thought. Far from it. We may be stable in a constantly shifting way, but most of everything we do is colored and guided by myths. There is the lucky penny, don’t let a black cat cross your path, don’t walk under a ladder (some sense to that one), lucky clover, avoid thirteen in any category, the gremlins did it, wish upon a star, don’t let the cat get your tongue, kiss a frog and get warts, old wives tales, it’s raining cats and dogs, Jason and the golden fleece, and an almost endless list of myths and common sense which are imbued and infused throughout our society. We seldom make any decision without one of these myths in some way coloring what we do. We have a myth driven society, which is in great substance the result of these multitudinous myths.
In spite of that flawed rationality which is the result of myths everywhere, we do pretty well with most of them. We know that there is not really a flying naked baby who shoots arrows into people to make them fall in love. We know that there are no little green men that prance around on St. Patrick’s Day, and we know that there is not really a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. That certainly doesn’t stop us from putting up green everywhere and saying: “Kiss me. I’m Irish.” We have fun pretending there are leprechauns and lucky four leaf clovers. We know that the Easter bunny doesn’t really lay eggs, especially brightly colored ones. That does not stop us from hiding them in our yards and watching the children hunt for them. It’s great fun. We understand that Easter is in some dim way tied to pagan fertility rites and that those rites existed long before the Christian church added it to their festivals. We know that there are not really witches on brooms, ghouls, goblins and ghosts everywhere on Halloween, but we sure have fun pretending that they are there. We are aware that Santa Claus came along only recently, thanks to Coca-cola cartoons and “’Twas the Night before Christmas.” We know that reindeer don’t fly, but we pretend that they do every year with glee. We know that all the toys are decidedly not made at the North Pole, and that fat men do not go down chimneys. No matter. We love the myths, enjoy them and look forward to them. No problem there. Myths add great substance and pleasure to our lives, as long as we understand that they are wonderful myths and not facts.
Our performance is abysmal, however, when we consider the myths of the Christian religion. For some unfathomable reason, we believe that all these outrageous myths are true and real. Presumably the main reason that millions and millions of people believe that these fables and allegories are absolutely word for word true, is because we have had rabbis, priests and ministers who have been shouting them at us for more than 20 centuries. Those papists swear that these flights of imagination are absolutely true. Shame on them. Its great to have myths; they add such depth and flavor to our lives. It’s a curse to be led to believe them blindly. That blind illogical faith leads us away from the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.
No woman in Jesus time had a baby without having had sex with a man. There was no virgin birth. Jesus was not a single child. He had brothers and sisters and was born into an illiterate peasant family. Mary Magdalene was not some distant woman. She was Jesus’ consort and lover. He kissed her often, much to the chagrin of the other apostles. There were no 12 apostles. That was a Markian invention, made to conform to the 12 tribes of Israel, which in turn were made to conform to the 12 signs of the Zodiac. There was no magical conversion of water into wine. There was no sudden manufacture of food for 500 from the ether. No one walks on water without water skis and a fast boat, or similar contraptions. No one dies, coagulates their brain, their liver, their kidneys, their lungs, then comes back to life again. Near death is near death. Death is death, permanent and complete. There is or was no person who was a human, God Almighty and a Ghost all at the same time. Trinity indeed; how farfetched can you get?
“Believe in him, and you shall have life everlasting.” There is no life eternal just by believing these Jesus fantasias. The only heaven that exists is right here on earth; it is our absolute duty to make the best use of our life with what gifts we have been given while we are here on earth. We can do that by loving God with all our hearts, minds, souls and strength, and loving our neighbors as ourselves. We do not have to believe all this religious mythology literally and attend church to be moral, creative and loving people. It is, in fact, difficult to be loving to all creation if we blindly believe these religious myths. We can do better.
“ It is too late in the day for men of sincerity to pretend they believe that three are one…and one is three…and yet that the one is not three…and the three are not one…but this constitutes the power of profit of the priests. Sweep away their gossamer fabrics of fictitious religion and they will catch no more flies.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“The majority of ministers either do not understand their material or else are deliberately misrepresenting it, if they know better. They represent myth and metaphor as historical literary events. The idea of virgin birth, for example, is represented as historical fact, whereas every mythology (and religious tradition) in the world has included the mythological motif of virgin birth in their legends and folklore. American Indian mythologies abound in virgin births.”
– Joseph Campbell
“Mistletoe was the Golden Bough that gave access to the underworld, according to pagan belief…The living plant was viewed as the genitalia of the oak god, Zeus or Jupiter…The phallic significance of mistletoe probably stemmed from the notions that its whitish berries were semen-drops, as the red berries of its feminine counterpart, holly, were equated with the Goddess’s menstrual blood…Modern customs of kissing under the mistletoe are pale shadows of the sexual orgies that once accompanied the rites of the oak god.”
– Barbara G. Walker