This is an excerpt from the Lady Writers League Advent course, which is an advent calendar style online course for writing Christmas stories.

While stories from any genre can use Christmas as simply an evocative “backdrop”, I think the yule season’s association with transformation on both a spiritual and a secular level, as well as the sense of expectation that the celebration of advent brings, make it the perfect match for deeply moving, archetypal stories.

Parallels between Christmas stories and the Monomyth:

• The motif of the return journey – mythical and epic stories and Christmas narratives often revolve around the nostos or return home.
• The universality of experience – transcending cultures and religions.
• The distinct separation of the Ordinary World from the World of (Christmas) Adventure – chiefly in time, but (depending on the story) possibly also in space.
• A periodic “re-enchantment” of the world by an everyman hero.
• A cyclical destruction and renewal re-enacted in many Christmas traditions, just as the world is renewed through the mythical cosmogonic cycle.
• The Christmas themes of birth and redemption are mirrored in the symbolic death and rebirth of the hero of the monomyth.
• The central importance of storytelling – the monomyth’s basis in myth vs. the Christmas story’s basis in the nativity story.
• The idea that Christmas is for children is reminiscent of the innocence of the hero of the monomyth who is often a younger son or daughter and lives in ignorance of the larger world.
• The physical transformation of the landscape into a winter wonderland — just as the wasteland turns into a realm of powerful possibility around the hero.
• The need to create light in the darkest time of the year – the darkness of the winter season paralleling the darkness of the underworld or World of Adventure.
• The foregrounding of inner belief — in Santa or the Christmas story, or the magic of the season.
• The centrality of the Christmas tree as symbolic of the World Tree or Axis Mundi.
• The laying aside of external differences/illusions, even if only temporarily (with the promise of year-long adherence) requires looking beyond the visible, which is the driving urge of the monomyth.
• The focus on internal harmony and integration, exemplified by Scrooge’s promise: “I will honour Christmas in my heart and try to keep it all the year,” mirrors what Joseph Campbell terms ‘the left-hand path’, or the way of the heart.
• The giving of gifts, tokens, talismans and messages of love is an important motif in both Christmas traditions and the monomyth.
• The sense of the unknown associated with the New Year parallels the hero’s expansive journey into the unknown to bring back knowledge.
• The (re)discovery of the Christmas spirit and its dissemination to the whole community, as the elixir of life or wisdom of the otherworld is disseminated by the hero of the monomyth.
• Finally, retelling Christmas stories to both entertain and educate others on the transformative powers of the season parallels the essential purpose of mythmaking.

In your writing:

1. You can use yuletide settings to key the reader into these traditional narrative undercurrents.
2. You can plot your character arc using an archetypal story structure like the Hero’s Journey or the One Page Novel.
3. You can allude to myths or mythemes to enrich your storytelling.

Further Reading

• The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell
• ‘Markheim’ Case Study (available in Lady Writers League course bonuses)
• The Fool’s Journey
• How to Write a Novella
• Magic worksheet

Don’t forget to pick up your handout in the Coterie!