From
The December 2003 St John's Eagle
"Deconstructing Christmas" By John Harcourt
As the
holiday season approaches, a disturbing thought sometimes occurs to
me: what if we were to restrain our celebration to a probable reconstruction
of "what really happened " when Jesus was born?
Jesus is
presented as the son of Joseph, except in the introductory sections
of Luke and Matthew. Nowhere else in those two gospels, nowhere else
in the entire New Testament, is Jesus' conception described as anything
other than quite normal and natural.
Jesus almost
certainly was born in Nazareth, not in Bethlehem. The census explanation
does not ring true: what responsible government would require people
to travel many miles to their place of birth in order to pay their taxes?
History records no such event. Bethlehem figures in the story because,
after the death of Jesus, many came to understand him as the Son of
David, a Messianic title — and Bethlehem, after all, was David's
royal city.
So much
of the nativity narratives in Luke and Matthew are patently a kind of
pious embroidery — the birth in a stable, the star, the shepherds,
the choir of angels, Herod's alarm, the coming of the Magi. Subsequent
centuries would expand the details: the medieval imagination added a
couple of midwives to the cast. And who can forget the oxen in the stable,
kneeling devoutly before the Christ child?
In short,
almost all the specifics of the Christmas story are non historical.
Phillips Brooks cannot surrender Bethlehem, but the point of his hymn
is clear enough: when Jesus was born, nobody noticed anything out of
the ordinary.
O
little town of Bethlehem, How still we see thee lie!
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep The silent stars go by;
Yet in thy dark streets shineth The everlasting light;
The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.
How silently, how silently, The wondrous gift is given;
So God imparts to human hearts The blessings of his heaven.
No ear may hear his coming, But in this world of sin,
Where meek souls will receive him, Still the dear Christ enters in.
Certainly
I am not suggesting that we suppress all the wondrous details of the
Christmas story not even that pagan Christmas tree. But at some point
in our exuberant celebrations, it may be well to retreat deep within
ourselves, to that moment of perfect quiet, as we take in the divine
stillness, the very ordinariness, of Jesus' birth. The Word was made
flesh, while everybody snored.
Professor
Harourt is the Charles A. Dana Professor of
English Emeritus at Ithaca College.
