The Influence Of Myths In American Culture

The definition of a myth is a traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people or explaining some natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events. Cultures use myths to embody its beliefs and views about the world they live in. We have grown up thinking myths are stories that are made up and just stories that you usually tell around a campfire. But a myth isn’t all fiction. Cultures have used myths for many of years to explain the universe and what their peoples place was in it. A myth is a religious story, a sacred story that explain how things work and life’s beliefs.
We all have heard the “myth” of Bigfoot. But bigfoot actually doesn’t meet the definition of a myth. The bigfoot story wasn’t made to describe a religious

practice or religious belief and it now labeled as a scary story. A true myth that we have in society today is the story of Jesus. Now religious people don’t want to think of him as a myth because to us that feels like we are regarding him but he fits the exact description of a myth. He is a story, to us, that has religious values and principles behind it. Jesus was a real person and he did real miracles but in some peoples minds they might think that ‘Yes Jesus was a real person but the miracles and things the stories says he does is the mythical fictional part’. I could agree on that sometimes its hard to believe stories about Jesus and how he walked on water and fed thousands of people with five fish and five loaves of bread but that’s were the religious part of myths come in. You have to have faith in your religion and each religion has different stories of what Jesus did to fit they way they want their culture to perceive it.
Myths to people are a way to pass their culture down.

The Anasazi were a group of people that lived in the American Southwest Now the Anasazi didn’t leave behind any written record of their culture instead they left artifacts and their ruins of towns. But their descendants are the Pueblo people that live in the American Southwest today that still to this day have the common culture. They all speak different languages but are able to get their cultures across to each other by their towns, their artifacts. Myths don’t have to be written down and surprisingly most aren’t. Most the time myths are transferred to a younger generation by the leader of the tribe or just by the older generation. Some myths, called creation myths, are the story of the origin of the people. A tribe in California called Maidu tells a story of how at one point everyone spoke the same language but suddenly everyone spoke a different language. The only one that could speak all the languages was their creator Kulsu, he came down and told all of his people the name of their animals, their laws, the way to get foo and their stories in their tongue. Then he sent each tribe somewhere else so live and start a new

life.
Myths to us don’t seem like a very big deal, ‘there just stories that we tell around a campfire the scare the youngsters’. The thing we don’t know is that myths actually make up a lot of our life’s’. From our religious beliefs to the stories we here at school, myths are something we live out everyday.