My Take on the Christmas Story--Part One

It’s Christmas time.  The holiday was named to celebrate the birth of Jesus, but behind this celebration is a long history of story-telling and ritual. Several stories get repeated during this season.  In the United States the dominant story is the story of the commercial rush. Buying stuff fits most easily into the story of St. Nicholas (Santa Claus is the Dutch translation) kept alive by the anonymously written poem, “The Night Before Christmas”. Christmas in the United States is an amalgam of many traditions.

Of course, there is Charles Dickens’ Scrooge, It’s a Wonderful Life, Christmas Story, the Nutcracker, and more.  Stories that create a mood of joy and community.

Each way we celebrate the holiday stands or falls on its own merit.  Combining them or looking for a common theme can water down the meaning of each of them.

The stories of the season are many and varied.  It is sometimes difficult to sort out the value of the differences among them.  *Though not agreed upon totally by scholars, it seems that it took almost 300 hundred years after Jesus’ birth, for part of the Christian church to chose December 25th as the day to dedicate to Jesus’ birth.  Another part chose January 6. (simply the difference in calendar changes.) Either way may have been a way of blunting the pagan meanings attached to that time of year by Saturnalia, a wild display of ‘freedom’--drunkenness, nakedness and sometime persecution of minority persons.

Our national and global context is radically different from the history that created Christmas as a given for everyone.  People in our time have seen and experienced too much evidence of a wider more interrelated and interdependent world to accept without question the story of the birth of Jesus as ‘the’ objective Truth.  That is troubling to many for whom this account from twenty centuries past has become a central meaning in life. 

As Christianity has become a part of a larger world, it is not necessarily true that its essential meaning is lost.  It does mean, however, that articulation of that story and its meaning has no leg up on any other tries to represent truth.  It is what it is, nothing more and nothing less.

The depth meaning of the Christmas story will not be advanced by insisting on it being the only story.  In fact, that weakens its potential significance.  Like any communication there must be first a relationship that can receive something in an open way.  If it is useful to the hearer,  meaning will come from announcing and sharing the story itself, not in trying to prove its worth by dismissing the experience and stories of others.  Even though Hanukkah is not a major Jewish feast, it does show up this time of year.  There is much to learn from the history and practice of the Jewish people.   Kwanzaa  has also been developed to be a way that all people, but particularly African-Americans can lift up core values.  These neither need to agree with one another nor contradict the other's claims.

Each story rises and falls on its own telling, hearing and action. It is not a question of competition but rather a question of purpose, meaning and significance for our personal and social living.

The story of Jesus has its own meaning.  We all know that mere repetition and ritualizing of it is not enough.  The challenge facing the Christian church is how to tell and share that story in a simple way that communicates the power the church believes the story of Jesus possesses. It need not be forced on others nor should it be marginalized because the other stories are more modern, entertaining, or satisfying. What is each story’s contribution to our common search for truth?

The story of Jesus’ birth (apart from the rest of his living and dying) is a simple story of human beings trying to find new life and light in the midst of death and darkness.  In that sense it bears a consistency with the many stories world-wide that over thousands of years attest to overcoming the dark forces of despair with light and the power of hope.

While a section of the scriptures of the Christian church tell two stories of the birth of Jesus (Matthew and Luke), they are told from two different perspectives. Not surprisingly differences exist between the two in sequence of events, those persons and places mentioned and not mentioned, and the author’s point of view--different angles on the same story.   A third ancient story teller, Mark, doesn’t mention Jesus’ birth at all. A fourth, John, uses the metaphors of darkness and light to communicate the meaning of Jesus in the world.

The popular re-telling of the story of Jesus’ birth usually melds these very different accounts and adds or subtracts certain emphases to make it a good story.  Martin Luther’s take, ‘the babe in the manger is the man on the cross’ suggests that to grasp the meaning of the birth, one must also see where this birth went.

Therefore, the telling of the story today is always one of picking and choosing.  One could argue that a consistent narrative has emerged that most of us recognize.

 A young woman, pregnant by mysterious means is without a husband. But a good man named Joseph agrees to marry her to avoid her disgrace in the community.  An enigmatic messenger (angel) tells Joseph not to be afraid because something special is going on here.   Joseph and Mary’s family have been summoned by Roman Emperor Augustus to be enrolled as citizens so they could pay taxes.  The ‘King of the Jews’ is the regional prelate named Herod.  They traveled a long distance  to pay taxes in their regional center, Bethlehem.  Upon arrival they search but do not find a place to sleep.  An innkeeper offers them a place with his animals in a stable.  It is there that Mary gives birth to Jesus.  She wraps the baby in ‘swaddling cloths’ and lays him in a manger ( trough for feeding animals.)  The word travels pretty widely though by shepherds who are tending their flocks outside the town. They are drawn, they say, by a light that guides them to the stable.  Through messengers named Angels, Joseph, Mary and others hear that this baby will grow up to challenge the oppression of King Herod and to bring a new kind of freedom to the Hebrew nation. The Wise Men show up later having to travel from long distances.  They seem to represent the whole world coming to recognize Jesus.

He is given a traditional Jewish name Jesus a transliteration of the Greek.  The older form is similar to Joshua, a Jewish hero that took the torch from Moses to lead Israel into the Promised Land.  Jesus can be translated as ‘one who saves.’

'Christmas' stops there.  Going beyond that is 'the rest of the story.'

Jesus is called the ‘Christ’ later in his life, a word that means ‘the anointed one.’ It is the role he plays, like Bob the Builder, Jesus the Christ. Christ is not his last name, the son of Joseph and Mary Christ.

The Hebrews, also called Jews and Israelites, have a 2000 year history of waiting for a new King, a Messiah who will throw off the slavery they experience and provide a path to a new way of living.  Some welcome this ‘good news’ while others doubt, are cynical and reject this claim of Kingship.   We are still discussing these differences today.

Can a baby born of questionable parenthood provide a new profound understanding of power?  Is there power in weakness, humility, and is that a truth that serves us more than the power of politicians, military leaders, and power brokers?

The simplicity of the story is its humanness and the truth of life it sets forth. While the world and its citizens find themselves oppressed, possibility exists when anyone can claim their own uniqueness and power.  It’s a long shot kind of hope, but when realized it carries with it a significant message about living.

Of course, as we know the story of Jesus does not stop with the story of his birth.  He teaches, preaches and heals throughout his life.  He walks among the poorest of the poor and challenges the establishment at every turn.  He eventually is killed, but becomes the central figure in a movement that is some years later named ‘Christian.’ 

This is only the beginning of a story that has been used for good and ill since its inception.  At its heart, it is a story that recognizes the gifts and possibility of every human regardless of privilege, culture, and economics.

The Jesus’ story offers one way to view life.  From the bottom up.  Some think that is the most important message in life.  Others on hearing the story might find it useful for their journey.

The past twenty centuries are filled with incidents where so-called followers of Jesus, including its leaders, have committed horrible atrocities in his name.  It is never beyond the stretch of human beings to distort a message to serve an evil purpose. These distortions certainly don’t help the case for the value of the Jesus’ story.  When these misinterpretations and uses are stripped away from the essence of the story, is there stil an essential human truth worth living and sharing?

Is it ‘The Greatest Story Ever Told’? Only you can decide.  And if this isn’t, what is?

*this article is not intended as a scholarly dissertation on the subject. It is the author’s attempt to cut through all of the ways we use to miss what the story seems to be about. Any proven historical accuracies will be acknowledged.  If they serve to change the author’s conviction about the story, he will take those into consideration.

+The author is using this article as a way of answering, partially, the question, ‘who is ‘Jesus’ for me today?’