Potential

I have long been a proponent of the idea that the Christmas story is not, at it's core, about Jesus at all. Although Jesus is the central character in the myth his later works only serve to provide us further justification for the expectation of greatness in this lowly, newborn child. The greater story here is the brilliance of potential present in all new life. New life is full of hope, dreams and wanting and the Christ Myth is just one story in a long tradition of human wanting.

Every culture has its own tales to tell about special children who grow to be, do or say something spectacular. We could choose to tell these stories from the moment of the deed thereby making the deed or deeds the central theme of the story. But we don't. We tell birth stories, childhood tales of uncommon intelligence, innocence, wisdom or piety, and coming of age stories that we hope will give us a bridge- a link- to our own greatness. We are not so much looking for ourselves in the stories as we are looking to find the story in ourselves.

I can't begrudge that instinctual search to anyone.