Talking point blog - the real meaning of Christmas

The School Nativity play for adults

This time of year some of us are subjected to the dulcet tones of Away in a Manger as a selection of children, with varying degrees of commitment, shuffle onto a Primary School stage and attempt to remember most of their lines. The school Nativity is must for parents and associated clergy alike. And while there is something rather sweet and lovely about the whole thing, there is a downside. And that is that for many of us, the school Nativity story is continued on into our adult years.

Ask most people the story of Jesus birth and they will dredge their childhood memories, telling you tales of donkeys, shepherds, stables and wise men. That’s what we remember, and that’s what we tell ourselves that the story is. Memory, of course, is a dodgy thing at the best of times, and often we confuse memory with fact. We’re all guilty of the odd bout of misplaced righteous outburst: “I told you I definitely remember putting it in that……..oh, there it is…..down the side of the bed”

We remember what we think is the story in the Gospels about Jesus’ birth but what we actually recall is a mishmash of little stories that when assembled into a bigger narrative form the angels, manger, shepherd, wise men tale that we think is right.

And that’s all fine, I suppose, except that the reality of the gospel accounts is very different.

If you were to ask someone in the street which is their favourite nativity account: Matthew, Mark, Luke or John’s, I wonder what their answer would be? I’d be surprised if you didn’t get a smattering of responses for all four gospels with maybe a slight leaning towards one rather than another. And that would be reasonable because all four gospels have a birth narrative? Except that they don’t. Only Matthew and Luke have a nativity story. Mark and John never mention it even once, and Paul, who wrote 30-40 years before the first gospel was written, only makes a passing reference in his letter to the Galatians: “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children.” ‘Born of a woman’ is all there is, and the same thing can be said of every single person alive today. It’s nothing special.

When it comes to Matthew and Luke their stories are quite different.

Matthew: genealogy of Joseph’s line; focuses on Joseph; lots of dream references; birth happens in their house in Bethlehem; roaming stars appear in the sky; wise men (of an indeterminate number) bring gifts; Herod hears of the child and slaughters the innocents in Bethlehem; the family flees to Egypt and remains there until Herod dies.

Luke: genealogy of Mary’s line; focuses on Mary; angels in-person as the medium for information; Mary and Joseph leave their home in Nazareth and travel to Bethlehem because of a Roman census, eventually ending up in the stable behind an inn; shepherds part of the story; after a couple of weeks, when their religious duties had been fulfilled, all three of them returned to Nazareth.

Does it still look like one unified story? Paul, Mark and John make no mention of the miracle of the first Christmas, and Matthew and Luke tell markedly different stories that don’t really match up. The false memory of the school Nativity play can seem quite foolish.

But, some may say, the other gospel writers wouldn’t want to replicate a story that has already been told! Where that falls down is in the chronological order the gospels were written. The scholarly consensus says that the order is Mark (60-75AD), Matthew/Luke (75-90AD) and John (90-110AD). These are rough guides and scholars may quibble over the dates, but the order Mark-Matthew/Luke-John is generally accepted by the majority of scholars. If the birth stories occur inly in Matthew and Luke you could argue that John left them out because they’d already been covered. It’s much more difficult with the earlier Mark. The Matthew/Luke stories didn’t exist when Mark was compiling his gospel but if those nativity stories had been part of the stories circulating about Jesus at that time, it seems strange that Mark would not mention them – even little bits of them. To be aware of stories of miraculous virgin births, choirs of angels, kings from the East, etc and NOT to mention them seems a little odd. Not even a passing reference to them. It would take a fairly brave biographer to deliberately miss out details like those as if they were of no importance. It would be like someone writing the life history of Paul McCartney but only beginning in 1972. Surely some things would be of interest before that date!!

The point is that what we read in the gospels is less like history, and more like theology. The gospel writers were not recording the facts, as a journalist might write down what happened at a particular event. The gospel writers were instead putting down their thoughts about the one called Jesus: a man who had such a deep and profound effect on their lives. As time went on and subsequent gospels were written, this theology became fleshed out as each of them pondered on what it meant to be the ‘Son of God. That is why, possibly, as time goes on the awareness of Jesus’ God-likeness gets pushed further and further back.

• Mark, the earliest, sees Jesus’ divinity confirmed at his baptism in the Jordan.

• Matthew/Luke see his divinity as being confirmed at his birth.

• John, the latest, sees his divinity confirmed before the creation of the world: “In the beginning was the Word……”

This may well indicate that theologies were developing over time, rather than the writers simply recording the events of the past as they were related to them.

Have I destroyed your warm and fluffy feelings about the Nativity story? I hope not. I hope that I have maybe pointed you in a different direction. So, what then, if not history, was the point of such stories?

It might surprise you to know that titles like ‘Son of God’ or ‘Prince of Peace’ and stories of virgin births were not confined to the New Testament. In contemporary times ‘Son of God’ and ‘Prince of Peace’ were given to some of the Roman Emperors. Also, virgin birth was claimed for at least a couple of Emperors. Julius Caesar and his heir Augustus come to mind although there may have been others. And while some people of faith may claim that these Romans were usurping titles and claims that rightfully belong to Jesus, may I point out that these titles and claims existed decades before Jesus. The truth seems to be that the gospel writers usurped these pre-existing titles and claims and gave them to Jesus as part of their theological musings.

Let me explain.

Being called Son of God and having a virgin birth were indications that you were someone very special indeed. It was only the great and the good that could claim these titles, and they were only claimed by the Roman Emperors themselves. To claim these things for a lowly peasant on the fringes of the Roman Empire was not only laughable, but it was also downright seditious. For it was locating a power and an authority away from Rome and putting it in an animal’s outhouse in Palestine. It was redefining what power, authority and leadership looked like. Ultimately, it was a dangerous act that could eventually get someone killed.

So, Christmas is not a history of angels and virgins and itinerant stars followed by wise men. It’s the story that asks a question. And that question is, “Who do you look to for guidance and leadership?”. It asks, “What do you think best represents what is important in life?”. “Are you more impressed with a wreath of laurels, or a wreath of thorns?”

As I see it, the gospel writers Matthew and Luke were asking their audience these sorts of questions. They sought to subvert the common understanding of power and importance and bring it away from the political and military might of Rome and instead place it in the words and actions of Jesus of Nazareth, a man whom people looked at and their image of God was updated and expanded.

This Christmas it’s easy to get caught up in all the busyness and bustle of Christmas – add in the omicron variant and that makes for a vastly more fraught Yuletide. I would suggest that the real meaning of Christmas (a phrase often used by people who want to plunge us back into a world of myth and fantasy) is not to blindly accept the Nativity story that we absorbed so readily from our Primary School days, but instead to ask ourselves the question, “what do I value; what is it that I see as truly of importance in life?” As with that first story of Christmas, the answer may well be found in unexpected people and places.

For a much better explanation of the Nativity I would encourage you to read The First Christmas: What The Gospels Really Teach About Jesus’ Birth by Marcus J. Borg & John Dominic Crossan.