There’s a significant amount of tradition, allure, and nostalgia that has accumulated around Christmas. I’ve often wondered how this warm-weathered Mediterranean landscape, in a very brutal moment in human history, has come to be identified with a serene snowscape filled with Nordic Spruce trees and the shushing of sleigh bells. Nevertheless, here are four facts you may or may not have known about the first Christmas.
1. Nightmare before Christmas
Tim Burton was not the first to come up with a Nightmare Before Christmas. Herod (the Great) was a paranoid leader by the end of his life and career. Anything that remotely resembled a threat to his political power was fair game for removal. Earlier in his life, Herod had 46 citizens of the Jewish ruling council (the Sanhedrin) killed for their political rivalry. Based on rumors, Herod had his own wife, Mariamne, killed, eventually her two sons, Alexander and Aristobulus, plus his brother-in-law, another son, and Mariamne’s mother as well. The historian Josephus said of him, “he was of great barbarity toward all men equally and ‘slave to his passions’” (Jewish Antiquities 17:8.1).
This is exactly the kind of devious cunning and political bloodsport depicted in the “Massacre of the Innocents” in Matthew’s gospel (2:1–18): “When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under” (v.16). This tragedy shows the true nature and common brutality of the times Jesus was born into.
2. House of Bread
How many boys would have been killed in Bethlehem at the time? We don’t know exactly, but we can take some educated guesses. Bethlehem, literally meaning “House of Bread,” was a rural farming town known for its grain harvest. Population estimates range from 300 to 1,000 people. Based on a population size of 500 people, we’d be looking at a conservative estimate of #8-10 Jewish boys under the age of two—a tremendous shock for a tight-knit village.
Bethlehem was significant because King David was born there. David tended his father’s flocks in the same fields the angels appeared over when they announced, “Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord” (Luke 2:11). The angel was heralding that the Messianic ruler had just been born in the same town as his father, King David. Bethlehem adds new meaning to Jesus’ later self-disclosure, “I am the bread of life” (John 6:35). The Bread of Life was physically born in the “House of Bread.” Yet, Jesus also said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven” (John 6:41). The Bread of Life, who came down from heaven, was born in a town called House of Bread.
3. The Inn – the Guestroom
Much lore has grown up around the very pregnant Mary finding no place in Bethlehem’s Hampton Inn & Suites to rent a room for her to give birth to her baby. According to the Zondervan Pictorial Bible Dictionary, a second-century theologian named Justin Martyr said that the Lord’s birth took place in a cave. The Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem was later built in 330 AD, over a traditional site. Yet, there is much to be skeptical of in the manner and location of this tradition.
Scholar Kenneth Bailey clarifies the history and mystery in the first chapter of his book, “Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes.” When the Lukan narrative says, “there was no room for them in the Inn,” the word for Inn is the [katalyma], which was effectively the family’s “guest room” at the end of their one-room domicile. Bailey’s premise was that the poor agrarian families in Southern Israel lived in one-room houses, but if they could afford to, they would build a second room, a [katalyma], to accommodate visiting family and guests. In this way of viewing “the Inn,” Mary and Joseph would have been received by family members into the main room of the house even though the guestroom [katalyma] was already filled, since everyone was home for the census. Listen to the NIV’s updated version of how the narration flows, “While they were there (in Bethlehem), the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.” More could be said about the manger, but I’ll leave that curiosity under the tree for you to unwrap when you read Kenneth Bailey’s book for yourself.
4. Flight to Egypt
Matthew’s account describes Mary and Joseph’s flight to Egypt to escape Herod’s assassination of the baby Jesus (Matthew 2:19-21). For most Christians, their flight to Egypt falls off our mental maps. We have no idea what was going on in that far-off place. It turns out, quite a lot, actually. Alexandria contained one of the largest urban Jewish populations in the world and would have been the perfect hiding place. It was out of that thriving community that the Hebrew Bible was translated into the Greek language in the third century. A cosmopolitan Jewish community had already been synthesizing Jewish faith and culture with Greek thinking and way of life, e.g., think Philo of Alexandria (second century). Egypt even had its own Jewish temple, which operated as a central gathering place for worship and prayer in the fifth century, perhaps more akin to synagogues, but nonetheless widely attractive to Jewish activity.
Conclusion:
Christmas is often romanticized, while the reality of history tends to be more complex, realistic, and sometimes intolerable. The original Christmas was not a serene and peaceful place. Jesus came to a real world full of cruelty and enterprise, hospitality and dangers. As we celebrate Christmas this season, let’s continue to pray that the “light of the world” liberate us from our evils and transform our darkness with his glory.
Tags: christmas, jesus, history, darkness, hospitality, light of the world, hostility, tragedy, jewish
