Christmas is the night of love

In the chilly air of the year’s final days, as colorful lights begin to warm the streets and melodies of peace drift into every home, we often speak of Christmas as a sacred milestone. It is the day when love, once an abstract concept, took on the form of a child to dwell among humanity. For many cultures influenced by Christianity, this is the beginning of an era of hope, a testament that Christmas is the night Love was born. However, if we momentarily look away from the manger in Bethlehem to view the broader landscape of human history, we realize with amazement that the longing for salvation and love did not simply begin two thousand years ago. Deep within the memory of mankind, there lies a greater and more ancient event that carved a lesson of rebirth into the consciousness of nearly every civilization: the Great Flood.

According to ancient records and the striking coincidences found in geological research, around the year 2200 BC, a catastrophic water disaster swept away the traces of the old world, forcing humanity to face extinction. Yet, in that very moment when the waters rose to the heavens, the instinct for love and kindness became the only lifebuoy for mankind. Each culture, depending on its worldview, chose a different way to respond to the raging waves, but they all met at a single common point: the love for life. In the Middle East, where the Old Testament originated, that love took the form of obedience and preservation through Noah's Ark. Amidst forty days and nights of torrential rain, that ship carried not just a family but the future of all species. When the green olive branch finally appeared upon the rocks, humanity understood that love is an eternal promise that life will always begin anew after every cleansing.

The flow of memory regarding the flood continued to spread to the East with deeply humanistic nuances. In India, the legend of Manu tells that the Great Flood could not drown the world because of one man's compassion for a tiny fish. By saving that small creature, Manu was led to safety by the very deity embodied in the fish. This story teaches us that love is sometimes just a simple act of kindness between individuals, yet that kindness is the energy that shifts destiny itself. Meanwhile, in China, love emerged with a heroic spirit through the image of Yu the Great. Instead of building a boat to flee, Yu spent thirteen arduous years—passing his own home three times without entering—just to dredge channels and divert the waters to the sea to save the people. Here, love was not just personal survival but the sacrifice of the small self for the safety of the community, turning the fury of the flood into a source of life for the fields.

Staying within this great global currents, Vietnamese culture also preserves a heroic epic of the struggle against the deluge through the legend of Son Tinh and Thuy Tinh. During the reign of the 18th Hung King, the flood of 2200 BC in the Vietnamese consciousness was not just a natural disaster, but a confrontation to protect happiness and the peace of the realm. Son Tinh used the strength of the mountains to counter the rising waters, symbolizing the resilient will and the steadfast love of the Vietnamese people for their homeland. We did not flee onto ships; we chose to raise the earth, using solidarity and wisdom to master adversity. Simultaneously, across the ocean, Greek mythology tells of the couple Deucalion and Pyrrha, who used love and sincerity to recreate humanity from stones after the waters receded, reminding us that humans may lose everything but will always be reborn if the heart still vibrates before the beauty of existence.

Even in the oldest clay tablets of the Mesopotamian civilization through the Epic of Gilgamesh, the image of the hero Utnapishtim overcoming the horrific flood became a symbol of humanity's thirst for immortality. Six cultural sources with six different responses—building an ark, saving a fish, dredging mountains, raising the highlands, or sowing seeds of stone—all testify that the year 2200 BC was a milestone of eternal love. If the Great Flood was a "universal cleansing" to filter out the stagnant and bring forth the pure, then what remained after the flood were the most precious things: compassion, sacrifice, and the hope for a new beginning.



Now, as we sit together during the Christmas season and gaze at the flickering candles, we realize that this holiday is essentially a modern "olive branch" that humanity offers to one another. Christmas is the moment the tide recedes within each person's soul; it is when we step out of the "great floods" of anxiety or pressure to find a harbor of peace. The event of Christmas and the story of the ancient flood are essentially two sides of the same coin. One side speaks of how we survive hardships through love, and the other speaks of how that love is celebrated as a divine gift. Whether you believe in Noah's Ark, the resilience of Son Tinh, or the Star of Bethlehem, the final message remains unchanged: Christmas is the night of Love. It is the night when the world is reminded that even after the storms pass, no matter how high the floodwaters rise, the human heart always holds enough room for the seeds of rebirth and compassion to bloom.



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