Christmas Debunked?

There are no shortage of debunkers of the Christmas story, from out and out atheists (of the Freedom From Religion ilk) to mythologizers -- those who believe the Christ story is yet another retelling of the age-old myth of the sun.  Here is an interesting one:

 However, it shouldn't be too hard to see that the mere similarity of the Jesus story to myth is not proof that the Jesus story is simply made up.  For starters, there are many, many miracles attesting to the living reality of the resurrected Christ (from the Shroud of Turin to the appearances of the blessed mother, to name but two).

What is quite distinctive of the Christian idea of God is that, for Christians, God exists outside of nature and the cosmos, and is not just the highest part of the cosmos as the pagan myths relate.  God is not a "being" at all, in the sense we think of being.   So the Christian God does not exist as the sun or as a star like Sirius.  Rather, those stars, and all physical reality, bow to the Creator God, and do God's bidding.   The Christian God is therefore quite different from the idea of God presented by the de-mythologizers of Christianity.   Christians believe the Jesus story is yet another proof of God's utter transcendence to the world, so transcendent that God can be immanent, i.e., enter into it as a human.  This paradox defines a central Christian principle, and sets it apart from pagan myth.

For more, see Robert Sokolowski, The God of Faith and Reason and Eucharistic Presence.   You can read an essay of Sokolowski, "Christian Religious Discourse" here.

And so, when Jesus enters the realm of the hear and now, "heaven and nature sing."  After all, like us, they are the Lord's.  That includes the star that led the magi to Bethlehem.