An opportunity to be better
If there’s an antidote to this data-drenched age, one in which even baseball managers consult charts and tables as if they were NASA engineers, it is surely the Nativity story of Christmas.
Even now, the minor industry of Jesus scholars notwithstanding, details and certainty remain scarce about exactly what happened the night that delivered the most famous person in the world and changed the course of history.
What we know of the birth of Jesus Christ — celebrated again tonight by more than two billion Christians around the world — comes from the gospels of the New Testament, which recount the angel Gabriel’s visit to Mary, her journey with Joseph to Bethlehem, the birth of their child in a stable, the star that lured the Magi, and their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.
Yet even in the gospels, we are presented with gaps, inconsistencies and contradictions. Only Matthew includes the Wise Men, only Luke the shepherds. For all the associated wonders, Christ’s birth isn’t even mentioned by Mark and John.
Modern scholars now largely agree that the actual year of Christ’s birth is wrongly presented and that the trip to Bethlehem was literary licence required to place the Nativity in the location foretold in Old Testament prophecies.
There were no contemporaneous accounts of Christ’s birth. Just as we don’t know for certain if, during his life, he personally claimed to be the Messiah, or if he intended to establish a religion.
The entire story, drawn from oral histories retained and related by mere mortals with imperfect memories and private agendas, wasn’t even written down until half a century or more after Christ’s death, and not taken as Christian canon for a further three centuries.
Yet for all that, for all the lack of definitive accounts, the story lives, perennially compelling and consoling, and irresistible for all the reasons any Hollywood yarn-spinner or gradeschool Christmas pageant organizer would recognize.
There is the wonder of the angel and the marvel of the guiding star. There are the exotic silks and turbans of the Wise Men against the humble garb of the shepherds. There is the compelling imagery of cattle giving way to a young couple in dire need, who found no room at the inn.
More important than its captivating images and characters, more enduring than its tale-weaving craftsmanship, was the fact the Nativity story spoke to humanity’s ineffable need and longing, our innate sense of right and just, our awareness, even unconsciously, of our own imperfection, our chronic selfishness and pride, our indifference or outright cruelty to our fellows.
Christ’s birth, the story says, was specifically intended to redeem those failings. The drumbeat of his teachings taught us how.
He insisted we act counter to our baser instincts. That we put others ahead of ourselves. That we forgive the worst of transgressors. That we love those most difficult to love, who are usually those who need it most.
Much of human failure, he taught, was a failure of attention, a failure to recognize our own privilege and blessings. The personal responsibility he insisted on was the personal responsibility of the Golden Rule, of loving others as ourselves.
What keeps the Nativity story as fresh as morning is that there remains as much need of those teachings in the here and now – in this age of inequality, inhospitableness, this age of fear and loathing — as there was the night of that celebrated birth.
Two millennia on, Pope Francis said as much in tweeting that “Jesus knows well the pain of not being welcomed. May our hearts not be closed as were the houses of Bethlehem.”
Year after year, generation after generation, the Nativity delivers lessons in the astonishing power of story, in the capacity of faith to trump ambiguity and contradiction, in the abiding appeal of goodness, humility, selflessness, generosity.
Every Christmas, the Nativity story suggests, brings the potential for redemption, for rebirth and the opportunity to be better than we are and the people we wish to be.