The Real Christmas Story

When my children were small they did not attend any church. So, just like so many Unitarian Universalist children, they were sometimes seen as little heathens by their peers. As some of you are painfully aware, this can lead to some awkward situations. When my son Miguel was young—he might have been six years old—another child asked him whether he believed in God. To our embarrassment and surprise he cheerfully chirped that he believed in Jesus…and John Henry (the steel driving man). I now think of that as our family’s first effort at interfaith inclusiveness. Miguel’s comment no doubt cemented his reputation as a little heathen and confirmed some adults’ suspicions regarding the religious education he was getting from his heretical parents.

I now realize that, as so often happens with children, he was on to something. In his mind Jesus and John Henry were names of actual people he had heard about in stories. Jesus and John Henry were names of heroes who did wonderful things. Because Jesus and John Henry were heroes of stories, they were real to him and their names stuck in his young mind.

Ah, the power of stories. I believe that at some deep level we are hard wired to respond to narrative. Telling stories is as old as civilization and as old as language. Long before writing was invented people told stories about the origin of the earth and of life, stories about gods, stories about animals, stories about groups of stars, stories about great heroes, stories about ancestors. Through stories thousands of generations have passed on their culture and their identity. In an oral culture, stories told from memory got embellished in the retelling. Think of the stories you tell among friends and family about events in your own life some years ago. Stories change a tiny bit with each telling. Stories often have morals to teach—lessons about bravery, loyalty, determination, enduring suffering, showing compassion.

Think for a minute how important stories are to children. Children love to hear stories. In fact, they love to hear the same stories over and over (and over!) again. We read bedtime stories to children. Nobody reads bedtime essays, bedtime editorials, bedtime avant garde poetry, bedtime literary criticism, much less bedtime sermons. It is stories that we long to hear. Stories touch our hearts in a special way.

The celebration of Christmas and the Christmas story have become so embedded in our culture that we assume it was always so. It wasn’t. Even in the days of colonial America Christmas was not a big deal.

What is even more surprising is that the earliest Christians do not appear to have celebrated Christmas. The old English word that eventually became “Christmas” does not appear until the twelfth century and the word “Christmas” itself, meaning Mass of Christ, does not appear until the sixteenth century. The earliest evidence of a celebration of the nativity does not come until the third century. The date of December 25 appears to have originated as a major pagan festival celebrating the winter solstice and the triumph of the sun over darkness. As Christianity replaced pagan traditions in the Roman Empire, people merged the old pagan festival with a celebration of Jesus as the “Sun [S-U-N] of Righteousness.” There is no mention of the time of year of Jesus’ birth anywhere in the Christian scriptures.

Today I would have us look at the familiar Christmas story as a story. Let’s think of the story as a myth or a legend, not as history. As with all stories, let’s not get too worried about the facts.
The story as we know it begins, of course, in the Christian scriptures. However, we need to remember that the scriptures were the writing down of oral traditions that had been around for decades. An amazing thing happens when we look again at the scriptures. Many of you will be surprised by what is actually in the scriptures—and what is not. Let’s turn quickly to the accounts in the four Gospels: the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

The consensus among scholars of the Christian scriptures is that the book of Mark was the first Gospel written, probably more than 30 years after the death of Jesus. Scholars also agree that the books of Matthew and Luke used the gospel of Mark as the source and the basis for their accounts and that Matthew and Luke were written some years later.

The first thing we notice is that Mark has no birth story at all. Jesus appears at the beginning of Mark as an adult, being baptized by John the Baptist. Mark describes Jesus as being from Nazareth. Why, one wonders, did the writer of Mark think it unnecessary to have a story of Jesus’ birth?

Matthew begins with a long genealogy, seeking to trace Jesus’ lineage back 28 generations all the way back through King David to Abraham. Matthew does have a birth story. In Matthew Jesus is born in Bethlehem. In this account wise men (meaning astrologers—not folks we would think of as especially wise today) come following a star seeking a king. They go to King Herod, who tells them the messiah will be born in Bethlehem, the birthplace of King David. In Matthew the wise men find Jesus in a house. That’s right: in a house. There is no mention of a manger. There is no mention that Mary and Joseph had come to Bethlehem from somewhere else. Alas, it is my sad duty to report that there are no camels anywhere in the story.

So, Mark has no birth story at all and Matthew has wise men coming to a house in Bethlehem.

The familiar nativity scene comes from the book of Luke. Luke begins not with the birth of Jesus, but with the birth of John the Baptist. The angel Gabriel comes to Zechariah, a priest, telling him that his aging and heretofore barren wife Elizabeth is to bear a son. Elizabeth is a relative of Mary. In Luke Mary lives in Nazareth. Gabriel comes to Mary (as Nadine alluded to in her chalice lighting this morning) and tells Mary that she will bear a child of the Holy Ghost. The story here actually returns to the birth of John. In the next chapter Luke tells the story of the Romans requiring everyone to be registered and to return to their own towns. Mary and Joseph go to Bethlehem. In Bethlehem Mary gives birth and lays Jesus in a manger because there is no room in the inn. In Luke we have the story of the angel coming to shepherds who then come to the manger. There are no wise men in Luke. There is no house. Even worse, I have to report that there is no mention of Mary riding a donkey! There is no donkey at all. Nor are any animals in a stable mentioned.

The book of John, like Mark, makes no mention at all of the birth of Jesus. The author of John is writing from a different theological perspective, a perspective deeply influenced by Greek ideas of a logos of eternal ideas that never change. Listen to the echoes of Plato in the opening lines of John: “ In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

Now, all stories have an audience in mind. Remember that what we have in the scriptures are stories being written down almost two generations after the death of Jesus. These are stories that have been retold hundreds of times and are now being compiled and written down by someone who is part of a particular community of people who are part of a new religious sect. These stories were never intended for us.

In the case of Matthew, all the concern about 28 generations of genealogy from Abraham to David to Joseph to Jesus is aimed at a Jewish audience who believes that the messiah will be a descendant of King David. And that is why in his story he mentions Jesus being born in Bethlehem. (The fact that in the story Joseph is not the actual father does not seem to affect the need to treat Jesus’ lineage as though he were.) The story of the wise men is a way of bolstering his case by saying, in effect, “Look, even gentiles from afar came and recognized the baby as a king.”

The story Luke tells has a slightly different audience. Part of the problem for the author of Luke is that Jesus was known to be from Nazareth, well to the north of Bethlehem. How does Luke deal with the need to have Jesus be from Bethlehem when people know that Jesus was from Nazareth in Galilee? From Nazareth to Bethlehem is a journey of probably five or six days on foot. Ingeniously, the author of Luke creates a tale about the Romans requiring every man to go to his ancestral home in order to be registered for taxation. There is no record of the Romans ever doing this in Palestine or anywhere else in their empire. Like all oppressive empires, the Romans were perfectly happy to tax you right where they found you. It would have created chaos to require the entire population to go to ancestral homes in order to register for taxes. What we have here is a creative way of getting Jesus born in Bethlehem in Judea but also to have Jesus as being from Nazareth in Galilee. The fact that King David had been a shepherd and that an angel appears to shepherds outside Bethlehem is another creative touch.

Part of what I find fascinating is that the story I grew up with in a conservative Christian church actually embellishes and changes the stories told in scripture. Think of the standard nativity scene. First, there is no mention of a stable anywhere in scripture. Separate stables as we know them were unknown in that part of the world. A manger is a kind of open box for placing animal feed—often carved out of rock in a cave or in the lower part of a house. We just saw that no wise men came to see Jesus lying in a manger, yet every Christmas enactment I have ever seen has the wise men come to see baby Jesus in a manger. No animals of any kind are mentioned in scripture.

Now, my purpose in this is not to be a kind of theological Grinch. My purpose is quite the opposite: I want us to revel in the story. I want us to celebrate the great story that Christmas has become. I am just fine with lambs and cows at a stable. I’m fine with a story about Mary with her blue shawl riding on a donkey. Wise men on camels are OK with me. (Heck, I can even be reconciled with a little drummer boy.)

The fact that probably none of it happened does not make the story any less true. As Lev Ropes reminded us in his reflection, the truth is in the story. I do not mean that we should be indifferent to facts. I mean that we should not confuse a religious story, a story that is still alive and changing, with a news story.

It would be absolute folly for us to reject the deep emotional and spiritual truths of the Christmas story. We don’t reject the truths about human life in Shakespeare’s accounts of Julius Caesar or King Richard or Hamlet because they are not historically accurate. That would be to miss the point.

The real Christmas story is a story. It is a story about hope and possibility. It is a story about how the embodiment of the sacred comes not as a powerful king, but as a helpless, impoverished, baby. In the northern hemisphere it becomes a story of the promise of rebirth in days that will soon get longer and warmer. The story has become a desperately needed story of the coming of a prince of peace, a story that reminds us of our desperate need for peace in our hearts and peace among the peoples of the earth. The Christmas story has become a story of generosity, compassion and justice.

The real Christmas story is not an exclusively Christian story. It is a human story. It is a story that expresses our deep longing to live in harmony with one another, our deep longing to be with friends and family again. The real story includes raising our voices together in familiar song once more. The truths in the story are the enduring human values and hopes that the story contains. The real story of Christmas is your story and my story. The real story of Christmas is as accessible to Jews and Muslims and Buddhists and pagans and agnostics as it is to Christians.

Let us celebrate Christmas! Let us rejoice in the real story of Christmas. Let the story of a poor baby bringing hope to the world touch you again in the deepest part of your soul. Feel the joy of Mary and the amazement of the shepherds. Let the wonderful songs of Christmas—Silent Night, Joy to the World, It Came Upon a Midnight Clear, Hark, the Herald Angels Sing, We Three Kings, and all the rest—let these songs sing in your heart and lift your spirit.
In this time of Advent, the time of preparation before Christmas, may we open our hearts to the rebirth of hope and the promise of peace. Let what is sacred and holy come into our hearts and dwell among us. O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.

What a beautiful story Christmas is. May the real Christmas story bring hope, warmth, and joy to our hearts.

Amen.