Lifting the Veil

The long Christmas season here in Spain is finally over and this week's Camino a Ítaca looks at stories and myth, the differences between them and who believes what. Click over to read the original artcile in Spanish in el HOY or read the English translation below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

Some Africans say that God made man because he liked to hear a story. And like God, we all like to hear them. But just when does a story make the mysterious journey and turn into myth?

People will believe something if they want to and will readily grab onto stories other people are telling if they like what they hear and it fits in with their worldview.

Take what just about everyone in Spain is celebrating today, the Three Wise Men. The myth is well known but the origin of the story is quite a bit more opaque. After all, they are only mentioned in one of the four gospels and Matthew doesn’t even reference how many there were, nor were any names given. The story ends there with the gold, frankincense and myrrh, with subsequent traditions embellishing the narrative.

It wasn’t sometime until around the 8^th century that they were assigned a number because of the presents they brought to the party, given names and subsequently birth places and therefore race. Their supposed relics were taken from Constantinople to Milan to where they have been since the 12^th century in their bling gold box in the ominous cathedral in Cologne.

But what happens when that myth is altered or even challenged? How does that change the narrative? A sterile polemic arose in Caceres the other day when the PSOE denounced that the town hall’s Christmas card had literally been whitewashed, with the removal of Balthazar.

It was imagined that the PP’s reliance on the ultra right was to blame for the removal. The polemic, however, was short lived when it was revealed that the very same image had been used the previous year when they were in power. By then it didn’t matter, the controversy was served.

But was the story so hard to believe?

The convenient alliances between myth and authority unravel the often delicate balance between enlightenment and indoctrination. Was it a message of intention?

The president of Extremadura herself once said that the neofacsist party dehumanized immigrants, of course that was moments before completely going against her sworn word and forming a coalition with them. Perhaps the openly xenophobic party that insists on the Christian roots of Europe was trying to Europeanize the roots of Christianity.

It has been the modus operandi of far-right movements across the world to take stories, manipulate them and turn them into myth. Then their takes are flogged to a conservative base that has been scientifically proven to hold more misperceptions and to be less able than others to distinguish (political) truths from falsehoods.

Take the violent assault on the American Capitol building. The world watched it live on TV, yet the right have now taken the story and turned in into a myth that it was just an exuberant crowd wanting a guided tour of the building. Or the even more disquieting attempts in places as diverse as Argentina and here in Spain to mythologize their bloody, criminal dictators as misunderstood benefactors.

Myths can serve a purpose and can be reinvented. This as long as they are understood as children eventually learn about the kings, that it’s just that a myth, not reality.