Christmas - The Greatest Eucatastrophe

Eucatastrophe: a sudden joyous turn in a dark tale—the happy ending "a piercing glimpse of joy...that for a moment...rends indeed the very web of story, and lets a gleam come through."

“The Gospels contain a fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces the essence of fairy-stories. They contain many marvels—particularly artistic, beautiful, and moving: ‘mythical’ in their perfect, self-contained significance; and among the marvels is the greatest and most complete conceivable eucatastrophe. But this story has entered History and the primary world; the desire and aspiration of sub-creation has been raised to the fulfillment of creation.

“The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man’s history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. This story begins and ends in joy….There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true.”

“It is not difficult to imagine the peculiar excitement and joy that one would feel, if any specially beautiful fairy-story were found to be ‘primarily’ true, its narrative to be history, without thereby necessarily losing the mythical or allegorical significance that it had possessed….The Christian joy, the Gloria, is of the same kind; but it is pre-eminently (infinitely, if our capacity were not finite) high and joyous. But this story is supreme; and it is true….Legend and History have met and fused.”

-J.R.R. Tolkien

“Hold on to the promise,

The stories are true,

Jesus makes all things new.”

-Andrew Peterson

Longish

P.S. Blog Post #100!!