The Scandal of Christmas
And for you history buffs, DON'T miss the footnote
Remember that one time a teenage girl got pregnant and her boyfriend didn't believe who the father was at first and they almost broke up over it but they didn't, and the baby was born in a barn while they were temporarily living unhoused, and then the couple got tipped off that government operatives were making plans to kill the baby and they ended up refugees running for their lives?
Whether you know much about the origins of Christmas1 or not, I encourage you to read on for a fresh take.
Such a scandal, that first Christmas, the advent of the long-awaited Jewish Messiah. Such a slap in the face to all that was considered righteous and appropriate by the good, moral, religious people of the day. Such a different scene than our modern season of twinkling lights and inflatable lawn decor and hot cocoa and fleets of Amazon trucks and seasonal movies and pretty packages under a bedazzled indoor evergreen tree.
Consider this very messy, very human cast of characters in the original story, as well as the conversations among the townspeople that might have ensued:
Emperor Augustus
Leader of the entire Roman world, who enforces the subjugation of dozens of colonies and hands down a very unpopular political mandate—an invasive and inconvenient census that requires every Jew to register in the town of their ancestral heritage.
He expects all of us to just drop everything—our work, our plans, everything—and hit the road for “home,” no matter how far away it is or how long since anyone in our family has actually lived there, to check in at some stupid colonial government office—just so he can gloat over how many people are under his control! What an ignorant, calloused, power-hungry @$$.
Mary
Unwed pregnant teen from a family of no significance in a town of no significance, with a crazy story of being visited by an angel who told her she is pregnant by God.
Riiiight. That's pretty much the worst excuse ever. We might not be highly educated people, but we all know how basic biology works. You got caught messing around, plain and simple, girlfriend. Admit it.
Joseph
Ordinary blue collar working man who had been planning to wed Mary, but now she has turned up pregnant. He knows he’s not the father and has his own wild story about an angel explaining everything, telling him he is supposed to go ahead and marry her anyway.
Suuuure, she’s “pregnant by God.” Bruh, admit it. Either you’re secretly the father and too smart to admit it, or she's lying to you and you're too stupid to realize it.
The Shepherds
Among the lowest of the social classes, uneducated and ceremonially unclean, doing the dirty work out in the fields on the night shift when a brilliant light envelops them, and a battalion of angelic warriors (a heavenly “host”) starts shouting about good news. Trembling in terror, they suddenly become the first group of people to receive the holy royal birth announcement.
What are they doing, traipsing into town with all their filth and stink? And this story about angels appearing to them out in the fields? Riiiight. Angels might appear to righteous men, but to them? Those lowlifes must be out of their heads, drinking on the job or strung out on something.
The Magi
Likely a group of wealthy Persian (modern-day Iranian) and/or Babylonian (modern-day Iraqi) astrologers who are highly educated on the religious beliefs of many cultures. They are willing to undertake a long and dangerous journey to Israel because they believe they have seen in the stars something of life-altering significance.
Who are these foreigners with their strange beliefs? We don't need them and their ungodly influence here in Judea. We already have enough trouble trying to keep foreign influence out of our society.
King Herod the Great
Provincial ruler over Judea, who had previously tried to win favor with the Jews but has become increasingly paranoid and cruel over the course of his reign. He sees threats to his power around every corner and mandates a brutal genocide of all Jewish male children under age two when he hears the magi inquiring about the location of a great king of the Jews being born in that region.
Hate is not a strong enough word to describe how we feel about you, Herod. How could you? How could you? History will never forgive you for this atrocity.
And consider the settings of the various scenes of the story:
The King's Palace
Not a place of beauty and glory, but a place of fear and suspicion beneath the opulent surface. To the colonized, it is a despicable symbol of the oppressive Roman government using their unchecked power to issue unreasonable demands and violent decrees.
The Road from Nazareth to Bethlehem
A ninety-mile stretch if taken directly, but a convoluted route which would take a week to ten days or even longer because of the cultural norm for Jews to skirt around Samaria, plus Mary's need to travel slowly as she nears the end of her pregnancy. It would be a dangerous and exposed journey, filled with highway bandits taking advantage of the census, which had pushed large numbers of inexperienced and vulnerable travelers onto unfamiliar roads.
The Labor and Delivery Room
A smelly and dirty barn or cave on the edge of town, or perhaps just the lower level of a family home. The specifics are unclear, but what we do know is that it is the location where the animals are kept overnight, not where people live. For lack of a proper bed, the newborn baby is laid in a feed trough.
The Fields
A rural area, far enough away from town that the noises and smells can be kept at a distance from the civilized people. Far enough away that shepherds are doing guard duty against wild animals. Far enough away that when an angel appears and the whole area is flooded with brilliant light and a vast host of the armies of Heaven appears, loudly shouting the birth announcement (the text makes it sound more like a battalion of rowdy and riled up Marines than an orderly chorus of cherubs in choir robes), no one from the sleeping town even notices.
These settings, these people
THIS is how the God of the universe chose to come to Earth, to live among us, to teach us how to live, to point the way to Himself. God's glory could have demanded better but didn't. The original Christmas story is full of marginalized and maligned people, unwelcome foreign influence, unpopular political decisions, disrupted lives, ruined reputations, suspicion and lies, cruelty and oppression.
The very incarnation of God passed through the messy birth canal of a young woman with no social status and was laid in a feed trough. The initial witnesses to the celestial heralding of the good news were the lowest of social outcasts—shepherds (appropriate for the one called the Lamb of God). The first group of worshipers were foreigners with out-there beliefs. The oppressive colonial government's response was state-supported genocide, prompting the already stressed-out family to flee their homeland for their own safety—the story of refugees throughout human history.
Every year, I am struck by the utter humanity and contemporary relevance of this story.
Every year, I am awed and grateful.
Every year I wonder what my reaction would have been if I were there, then.
Every year I consider what my response is here, now.
It’s kind of a big deal. I don’t know everything, but I know this: the Christmas story is sacred.
We celebrate Christmas in our home—and not the Santa, Jingle Bells and Frosty the Snowman variety, either—the real Christmas, the glorious King of the Universe disguised as a tiny babe of humble means, 2,000 years ago. That is what the actual Christmas holiday was, is, and should always be about. As such, I am all for gathering the family to celebrate—to feast and exchange symbolic gifts in honor of this greatest gift of all time.
However, I’m not offended when retailers choose not to use the word "Christmas” when advertising for their big sales. What does glitz and glitter and discounted prices on electronics have to do with Christmas, anyway? To insist that commercial businesses refer to a circus of American consumerism as “Christmas” is ridiculous. Is the God of the universe feeling put-out that some American retailers exclude the words Merry Christmas from their annual greed festival?
Perhaps I’m coming on a little too strong here. We do exchange gifts in our family, after all. In fact, here is a link to the gift-giving guide I created myself and posted two weeks ago. But there are many holidays celebrated at this time of year, and most of them involve the giving of gifts. So, if retailers want to slash their prices and run all sorts of gimmicks for “the holidays” rather than for “Christmas,” that’s fine with me. I do my best to steer clear of the stores and television at this time of year anyway. Buying stuff is just not the main attraction of Christmas for me. Honestly, I would rather they don’t mention Christmas by name. I’d prefer to keep Christmas sacred.
I do hope everyone who celebrates it has a joyous Christmas season, celebrating the greatest gift the world has ever known. May we never forget or allow its significance to fade in comparison to the glitz and glamor of the commercial world's "most wonderful time of the year."
Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and may God touch your life in an unmistakable way in the coming year.
Until next week,
Sherry
P.S. We are enjoying some down time with family this week in San Diego. Next week, we hit the road again in Walter, our big yellow adventure truck. We have exciting plans for continuing our nomadic life over New Years, through the month of January, and beyond—for the foreseeable future. Stay tuned for stories from places neither Andy nor I have ever been before. We are so excited to return to exploring new places and making new friends!
P.P.S. PAID SUBSCRIBERS: Did you get my postcard from that amazing winter wonderland? If not, I might not have your mailing address yet. Message me and I’ll pop yours in the mail. Also, check your email for another note from me this week about how this year’s Diesel & Dignity proceeds were used to bless others. Thank you for your generosity and support of our efforts. We are passing it along and paying it forward.
Yes, I know our modern holy day (holiday) called Christmas is not an original element of Christianity. It is not in the Bible and was not celebrated by anyone while Jesus was alive or even in the first 300 years after his death. Many scholars—even most Christian scholars—have historically concluded that Christmas was originally an invention of Latin (Roman Empire) Christians who co-opted the Roman winter solstice event, which fell on December 25 in the Julian calendar, for their own celebration.
But a more recent deep dive into the history of the holiday concludes quite the opposite. According to this fascinating research, the date of December 25 was chosen about three hundred years after Jesus’ death as the only logical conclusion for the birthdate of the Messiah, based on an early Church tradition paired with a complicated set of mathematical calculations by Latin Christian scholars. The Roman Empire, trying to suppress the fervor of the rapidly growing Christianity movement, then co-opted the Christian holy day into its own solstice celebration as a way to weaken the cultural power of the Christmas event.
For a scholarly peek into this theory, click here to check out the work of Dr. William J. Tighe, a Yale and Cambridge scholar and Professor of History, Emeritus, at Muhlenberg College, who researched and wrote about the topic extensively for Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity.
NOTE: Now that we use the Gregorian calendar, adopted in the 1500s to accommodate for the leap year problem and make the timing of Easter more consistent, solstice occurs on December 21 or 22 each year. You are now free to celebrate each one individually, without calendrical* overlap, if you wish.
*I thought I’d just made up the adjective calendrical, but I looked it up. Rats. Already in the dictionary. Oh, well.
Blessings to you both and Merry Christmas.
And Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you and Tom! 💜