The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain

NO modern Biblical scholars would rate the Nativity stories very highly among sources for the life of the historical Jesus. It now seems to be generally accepted that they are an extreme case in the Christian gospels of inventions by the authors to place Christ in traditional Jewish salvation history. (...) The tales make sense, however, on a mythological level, not merely as confirmations of specifically Hebrew prophecy, but as archetypal representations of the birth of a hero, at the junction of many worlds: engendered partly human and partly divine, coming into life at a place neither a house nor the open air, belonging partly to humans and partly to animals, and in a strange land, and adored by people living upon the margins of society.