There is no possible world where Jar Jar Binks makes it to Bethlehem.
This is also true of Santa.
Now some of you might think: “Duh. This is because Jar Jar and Santa are not real and the story of Bethlehem is.” I know. This is true in this possible world (the actual one), but I would like to suggest that there is no possible world where Jar Jar Binks and Santa could come to the Crèche.
Why?
Both Santa and Jar Jar are mythic failures and unfit for the perfect story that is Christmas. Leave aside (for just a moment) that the Nativity happened in space and time. There is a reason that Hollywood once made a film about the life of Jesus called “The Greatest Story Ever Told. ”
A myth, as Plato understood the term, is not a false story. A myth might be historical or ahistorical, but every good myth is a likely story. A myth hangs together and is the sort of the thing that could be true given our experiences and the rules of the story. Lord of the Rings didn’t happen, but it is a good myth because once you accept the assumptions (Elves, hobbits, magic), it is the sort of thing that could happen. Star Trek: the Original Series is a good myth, but like many good myths does contain some incongruities. The notion that in the future “we don’t use or need money” is silly and this description of the Federation never lasted.
The first Oz book picks up on the themes of the Odyssey and works as a myth. Late Oz books by Frank L. Baum are fun to read, but do not work as myth and are hard to remember as a result. They are Baum’s Guide to Improbable Lands and not a story with consistent rules that teach us a deep truth. There is no Narnia, but anybody who has read the books would know it if we went there. We can learn from the tales. It is true at a metaphysical level (like the Lord of the Rings, Buffy, or Firefly).
Some secularists are so tone deaf that they do not get this way of coming to the truth. Richard Dawkins, to his credit, does understand that beauty in a mythic form can move us deeply and make us civilized. God become fully one of us was a profound idea . . . nothing like the stories of God coming down and being “like us.”
Zeus could visit in human form or Hercules the demi-god could become a god, but no god became fully human by choice, retaining divinity. This was a remarkable new element to Christianity. The Word (the Reason, the God of the philosophers) took on flesh.
Plato never guessed, Aristotle would have been stunned. It is no wonder paganism withered under the blow of the Incarnation. Constantine delivered the death blow to a corpse so moribund that a later pagan emperor could not revive it . . . even with force.
The story of Christmas is perfect. It is as it must be. Shepherds have to come, because once they come, then you know that this was right. God would tell the least of these, those like David out watching the sheep. Wise men have to come, because what else would a wise man do? As for the religious rulers and business guys like the innkeeper, they missed the Son of God, because that is generally what we do.
If Bethlehem never happened, I could still learn much about reality from it.
This brings us to Star Wars. Now long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away, the story did not happen. Still, from moment one watching the films as a youngling, I got it. Why? The elements of the story are good myth: good versus evil. Good wins after suffering. A hero goes on a quest. Friends gather and defeat power. These are all deeply true . . . truer than many a propaganda laden documentary. In fact, one can get more mythic truth out of the first three Star Wars films than any Christian documentary or television program I have ever seen.
Why?
Most Christian documentaries are right about the facts, but are bad story telling. They may say true things, but the stories are lies. When we pretend that every prayer is answered “if we have enough faith,” we lie. When we pretend that atheists are all evil crabs, we lie. When we act as if getting saved solves all our problems, except for the ones we make by sinning, we lie.
Our story telling, our mythmaking, can lie when our direct words do not.
This is the problem of Jar Jar. He is unreal, not just in the sense that he is computer generated, but in the sense he is not a person. Don Knotts played the bumbling deputy, Barney Fife, to several Emmys. “Barney” was clumsy, clownish, but he also had a heart. He was a complex character and most of us can relate to him. If you can relate to Jar Jar, and are over the age of seven, then you have serious problems.
And they made Jar Jar a general and then a senator.
No. Never for one moment do we cease to think of Jar Jar as a cartoon and come to think of him as a person. He is mythically impossible.
But then so is Santa. We have a Playmobile version of Santa and one of Saint Nicholas. My son Ian always positions Saint Nicholas as triumphant over Santa Claus . . . and so it would be. Santa is a bad myth. Saint Nicholas not only really existed, but he is a good myth.
Saint Nicholas was a real person . . . a myth that had being. Historically he governed a church well, caring particularly for children and the poor. He also cared about sound doctrine, perhaps to the point of punching a heretic in the nose. Like most saints, he had flaws, but he was real. Even the later legends (false, but likely stories) told about him have value if we remember what they are. They tell a possible story that has teaching value. As long as we keep the legends and the man separate in our minds, we can learn from both.
As for the jolly man in a suit: consumer Santa. He is not real. He is as fake as Jar Jar in our modern accounts . . . too jolly, too stupid, too uncaring about the state of the world. He isn’t at the North Pole and he couldn’t be. He is unworthy of a grown man’s suspension of disbelief . . . the way good story telling earns our trust in That Hideous Strength or Watership Down.
I can believe in Fiver the Rabbit and can suspend my disbelief to root for Han Solo (that Lovable Rogue), but Santa Claus (as marketing has made him) is just a beard for the toy companies.
Don’t get me wrong. C.S. Lewis is right: Christianity is the myth that is true in space and time. This matters a great deal. I can learn mythic truth and historic truth from the historical records of Jesus.
But there is an important truth in the bad story telling of Jar Jar and consumer Santa: myth matters and some stories are not worthy of a person’s time at any level. Christians should stop telling those stories (looking at you The Shack) and remind ourselves that myth matters. Come to Bethlehem and see Him whom every good myth foretells.
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The innkeeper did not make it and neither did the sycophants. And they were real.
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