Born in 1923: René Girard, French literary critic, philosopher, and anthropologist.

“No doubt the virgin birth of Jesus still resorts to the same ‘code’ as do the monstrous births of mythology. But precisely because the codes are parallel, we should be able to appreciate what is unique to it – what makes it radically different from the messages of mythology:

The various episodes around the birth of Christ, make palpable the humble beginnings of the revelation, its complete insignificance from the standpoint of the mighty. Right from the start the child Jesus is excluded and dismissed – he is a wanderer who does not even have a stone on which to lay his head. The inn has no room for him. Informed by the Magi, Herod searches everywhere for him in order to put him to death.

Throughout these episodes, the Gospels and the Christian tradition…place in the foreground beings foredoomed to play the part of victim – the child, the woman, the pauper and domestic animals.”