Two Christmas Stories

“… since Providence, which has ordered all things and is deeply interested in our life, has set us in most perfect order by giving him to us, whom God filled with virtue that he might benefit humankind, sending him as a savior, both for us and for our descendants, that he might end war and arrange all things . . . the birthday of this one was the beginning of the good news for the world that came by reason of him…”

Declaration of a New Calendar Dated upon the Birth of Augustus Caesar, 9 BCE

There are really two Christmas stories, side by side, two stories that are happening at the same time in history but in very different kinds of places and with very different kinds of people. Augustus came to power in 27 BCE as the Roman Empire was formally declared. His reign was meant to bring a hoped-for age of prosperity and peace in the world. He even had one of his patrons, Virgil, write an epic poem that would cement his status as a Divine, chosen being, the one through whom the world would be redeemed and renewed.

This quotation contains several important words and concepts that the Gospel writers would take, directly from those Roman associations with Augustus, and instead associate them with Jesus and his message--the Savior, the Prince of Peace, the Good News. They used these terms very intentionally, because they were trying explicitly to contrast the values associated with Jesus with the values associated with Rome and the Empire. For them, the life and teachings of Jesus showed the face of a God who was not the Emperor of Rome, but who was a humble and poor servant.

The Christmas story itself is full of these kinds of repudiations of the Empire. St. Luke probably indicates that Caesar Augustus was the Emperor at the time of Jesus’s birth in his Gospel because he wants to show the story of another kind of king, one who does not appear in the center of the universe--Rome--but in the middle of nowhere--in Bethlehem, Palestine, a city that is still small and poor today, as it was 2000 years ago. This different kind of king, Jesus, appears there, not to the wealthy, but to the poor, and not to the powerful, but to those who had so little power they were basically invisible. Jesus is born among the poor and invisible and ministers among them and only gains the attention of Rome when he becomes a threat to their social and economic order, and they put down the threat of his kingdom in the way that they so violently put down so many others.

One way of helping us to see the Christmas story with fresh eyes, for what it really is, is to decontextualize it, to defamiliarize it, to imagine it in different contexts than the often schmaltzy and over-sentimentalized art and music of Christmas that we are used to.

There are many artists who have depicted the Nativity, the scene of Jesus’s birth, in circumstances particular to their own culture, to create a Holy Family, in other words, that looks more like them than the typical depictions of Jesus we are so familiar with in our culture. These nativities give these cultures visibility in ways that I think are really important today, and they also remind us that Jesus still comes today in the disguise of poverty and invisibility, waiting for the powerful to give him voice.

This picture in particular is worth pondering; not only are Joseph and Mary obviously poor, but they are virtually invisible because they lack the resources to be able to find lodging on this most important night for Mary (or Maria). And they are obviously tired, lonely, and afraid.

The artist, Everett Patterson, said that he consciously tried to create a sense of perspective in which we are seeing these people from the safety, warmth, and security of our car as we drive by. He is trying to make us ask ourselves the question: would we stop and help the Holy Family today?

How many of us who find some truth or inspiration in the Christmas story really understand that it is about God choosing to enter the world in the frailty and uncertainty of the lives of a poor and under-resourced family? And that, in doing so, God wants to pronounce a special blessing on all those who are not seen, all those who struggle to be visible in our society.

My prayer for all of us this Christmas is that, if we see a nativity scene, if we attend midnight Mass, or if we hear about this story in any context, in a song, on a Hallmark special, whatever the case might be, that we pause to remember the story’s origin, the story of the birth of king who rejected all the wealth and trappings of Empire so that he could be closer to the poverty of our humanity, so that he could help make visible all the invisible, so that he could remind us in his own story that love is not reliant on gift-giving or receiving, but only in receiving the free gifts of grace, and mercy, and hope.

I pray that God blesses you in this holiday season with the warmth of family and friends, but also with these reminders of an alternative vision of the Christmas story.