Christmas is More Than a Story

I love Christmas and the Christmas story. Singing angels, gifting Magi, the image of God as humbled as possible as a helpless baby in a manger. But it’s not important to me whether these are literal historical facts about Jesus. If that kind of thing matters to you, stop reading here because my intention is not to envelope your Christmas star in an intellectual gloom. If you want to believe these stories happened just as written, that is wonderful, and you should continue to enjoy them.

I don’t think the details of the Christmas story happened the way they are recorded. I think the truth about the Christmas story is richer than a simple history. The details are wrapped in theology and metaphor and taking them literally actually robs the stories of their real power.

The Christmas Narratives are Distinctive

It’s worth noting that the earliest written Gospel of Mark does not contain a birth story at all. Further, Paul never writes about it in his letters. Only Matthew and Luke record details of Jesus’ birth, and those details differ because the narratives are distinctive. Meanwhile, John takes us back cosmically before Jesus’ human birth identifying Him as the preexistent Logos, or Word of God.

Here are the well-known elements that come from Matthew and Luke:

• Announcement of Jesus’ Birth: Both Gospels describe the announcement of Jesus’ birth, with an angel visiting Mary in Luke and visiting Joseph in Matthew. This distinction is easy to harmonize, one doesn’t contradict the other. But it is a hint that each authors’ intent was unique and wanted to emphasize something different than the other.
• Mary and Joseph: Mary is a virgin betrothed to Joseph. In both accounts, they are central figures in the narrative.
• Birth of Jesus: Jesus is born in Bethlehem. Luke emphasizes the humble circumstances of his birth, mentioning that he was laid in a manger because there was no room at the inn. No one wrote down the exact date of Christmas, but there are a lot of great reasons to decide it was December 25. The early church believed that prophets were born and died on the same date, and they calculated Jesus’ death to March 25-26. Add nine months and you get Christmas Day. And it helps that it’s close to the Winter Solstice when we’re already celebrating the return of light to the world.
• No room at the Inn. While Luke records that there was no room at “the inn,” it may surprise you that no innkeeper makes appearance in the story. In fact, there is some evidence that what Luke had in mind was more like a house than what we think of as an inn.
• Shepherds and Angels: In Luke, angels announce Jesus’ birth to shepherds, who then visit the newborn. This highlights the theme of humility and the message of peace. Luke had a more universal audience in mind.
• Magi and Herod: Matthew includes the visit of the Magi who follow a star to find Jesus, bringing gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. He also mentions King Herod’s plot to kill Jesus, leading to the Holy Family’s flight to Egypt.
• Genealogy: Matthew traces Jesus’ lineage back to Abraham, emphasizing his Jewish heritage as it is generally accepted that Matthew intended to show his Jewish audience that Jesus was the Messiah. Luke traces Jesus’ line back to Adam, probably to underscore the universal significance of Jesus. I don’t believe in an historical Adam. Scientists have dated our oldest Homo Sapiens fossils to at least 300,000 years ago, so there is no way Luke’s ancestry tale is remotely accurate. Luke was making a point, not about anthropology, but about theology.
• Setting: Luke describes the birth in a stable and the visit of shepherds, while Matthew mentions the family’s escape to Egypt after the Magi’s visit. Again, I don’t necessarily see this as a conflict, but it underscores the premise that the author’s intended to emphasize distinctive elements for distinctive theological purposes.

Evolving Christology

It could be a coincidence, but if you line up what is said about Jesus’ relationship to God as it was written chronologically, you get an evolving Christology. Bart Ehrman has written about the “backward movement,” of Christology. The later the date of the writing, the higher the Christology rises.

Paul (writing roughly 48-66 CE) doesn’t mention Jesus’ birth or lineage at all. It seems that if the birth narrative was important for Christian identity or salvation — not to mention conversion to the faith — Paul would’ve written about it. It probably wasn’t part of the discussion among the earliest Christians. The striking thing was not Jesus’ birth, but Jesus’ resurrection. In the beginning of Romans, Paul says that Jesus, “was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead…” After 2,000 years, we have somehow lost the shock value of our messiah dying and rising. Paul is saying that God took the holy neon highlighter to Jesus’ story through resurrection as if to say, “this guy right here is the messiah pay attention.” But later, it was only natural for the faithful to extend the son-ship earlier. And I want to be clear, I agree. I’m just saying that early Christians probably didn’t record the facts of Jesus’ birth so in order to be faithful we had to invent stories that were theologically true even if they lacked actual fact.

In this way, Mark moves backward from the resurrection to Jesus’ baptism. Mark was written later (roughly 70 CE) and like Paul doesn’t mention Jesus’ birth. Just because we date Mark later than Paul doesn’t necessarily mean that Paul didn’t have similar source material. But it does show an evolution of thought. In Mark, Jesus becomes the Son of God at His baptism which is where Mark kicks off the story, not in Bethlehem. If you insist on literalism, it is not impossible to harmonize Mark with Matthew and Luke. Just because a voice from the Heavens announced Jesus as the Son of God at His baptism doesn’t mean he wasn’t also born that way. But because the narratives evolve over time it supports Ehrman’s idea that Christology also evolved.

Then we get the other Gospels. By the time Matthew and Luke were written (probably 80+ CE but there are arguments to be made for an earlier date and I find myself open to those arguments), people wanted to hear more about Jesus’ birth and contrast that with Roman rule since Caesar was also called God’s Son. This is why I think the stories are metaphorical, but maybe it happened exactly like that as well. Finally with John we get the most majestic Christology of all, Jesus is the Word of God made flesh.

The Meaning is the Truth

A tennis coach who was teaching me to control the spin of my serve gave me some images to focus on. Throw a football or javelin over the net. Hit a clock face from seven to one o’clock. Those ideas kept my serve in the box with a lot of topspin yet none of them were actions I was actually performing. Imagery is helpful. Metaphor can be more guiding and contain truth that history cannot.

Again, I don’t want to spoil anyone’s belief and enjoyment here. If you believe these stories happened exactly this way, go for it. I personally think that they are written metaphorically with some specific theology in mind. That meaning is way more important to me than the facts. The great thing is, you don’t have to take one side or the other to understand and get the most out of the meaning of the Christmas narratives.

Even if the Christmas details are not what we would call, “true,” in our modern minds, I think the beauty of their response to Jesus’ resurrection is more true than, “true.”

What do I think happened? Since I don’t have a time machine or an advanced degree in biblical studies, take this simply as one blogger’s idea. This is just how I try to make sense of it. The resurrection is what started our faith, that is the important — and I believe historical — fact that is central to Christianity. Ever since, Christians have been looking backward through scripture trying to make sense of the resurrection and working forward through their best theological efforts trying to make sense of it as well. If Paul and Mark agree that Jesus is the Son of God, then when it comes time for Matthew and Luke to write a birth story it only makes sense to include messianic prophecy as part of the narrative. They didn’t have actual birth facts or stories at hand so when tasked with making them up they figured it would be theologically accurate to show that Jesus was the Son at birth and so it made sense to include older scriptures that could be interpreted in that light. They weren’t thinking through our modern lens of historical authorship and investigative journalism, they were writing stories to make theological arguments. So now we have Jesus’ sonship tied in with a divine birth whereas it was tied to the resurrection and baptism in earlier writings. It doesn’t bother me that we probably don’t have historical facts about Jesus’ divine birth, because what is really being said – Jesus is the Son of God and Caesar is not – is true. You can’t blame Matthew and Luke for filling in the gaps in a way that was theologically consistent. In fact, I think we should celebrate how they did it and the wonderful story they passed along that has warmed hearts and fascinated children ever since.

My plan is not to take up the virgin birth here, I certainly will at some other point when I get around to the creeds. In brief, Matthew’s goal was to write to a Jewish audience and convince them that Jesus was the Messiah. So, Matthew’s take on the virgin birth is partially based on a mistranslation in the Septuagint that changed “young woman,” to, “virgin.” But by referencing Isaiah, Matthew was signaling to his Jewish readers that there was something deeper going on here connecting Jesus’ birth to Israel’s wider story. Luke seems to want something different of the virgin birth. Luke may be recalling the many miraculous births in the scripture to show that God can make the impossible possible. In both Gospels, Jesus is the divine answer to centuries of waiting in despair. In both Gospels, Jesus embodies God’s spirit. If you read this story forward, it makes sense. Jesus was God incarnate from the very beginning. If you think about this in reverse chronology as I am suggesting, it equally makes sense. How could God have raised Jesus? He must be God’s Son. Then how would God’s Son be born? It must be in a miraculous fashion in a way that fits into Israel’s story. Even if the Christmas details are not what we would call, “true,” in our modern minds, I think the beauty of their response to Jesus’ resurrection is more true than, “true.”

I don’t have space here to go into than many wonderful elements we’ve been gifted in these stories. The symbolism in the nativity stories such as the star, the manger, and the gifts of the Magi have informed me through five decades of advent seasons. The fact that the Gospel writers were searching their scriptures for evidence of prophetic fulfillment demonstrate their faith in the resurrection and their faith in the larger narrative about God’s plan for humanity that helps me anchor my own faith. Extending their resurrection faith to the incarnation – however it happened – seems logical to me and they were brilliant enough to tie in Jesus’ core messages of humility and peace into their stories. The Christmas story is miraculous in the best sense of the word and should be cherished. It’s way more meaningful than what a literal fact might give us.