Ask any school-aged child what the ‘true’ meaning of Christmas is, and they’ll reel off something along the lines of: Mary and Joseph were having a baby but they couldn’t find anywhere to stay so she had the baby in a stable and then some people came to visit with presents. Sounds fairly like your average trip to the maternity ward, save for the stable bit. They know it off by heart because every year they go through the excitement of enacting it in front of a crowd of half proud, half bored, parents. Most of them weren’t lucky enough to get to play Mary or Joseph, or even a shepherd – they got stuck being a sheep, or, as I once did, a snowman. I don’t have to go into the complicated scriptural debate about when Jesus was actually born to be pretty safe in stating that there were no snowmen around in Israel over 2000 years ago. And certainly not any with a scarf as cool as mine… The point being, however: how close is our childhood fairytale nativity to the biblical narrative?[1]

Let’s begin in the most logical place – the beginning. Picture your average school hall, with a rather ‘rustic’ cardboard set and a lot of children with tea towels on their heads. Mary, of Nazareth, is engaged to Joseph, also of Nazareth. Both are told that Mary will conceive a child from God. No problems so far; though quite what the childish understanding of ‘the virgin Mary’ pre-sex education is, I have no idea. Luke describes how a now heavily-pregnant-Mary and Joseph travel to Bethlehem for registration. Here lies the first fabrication. Not in anything I’ve just described but in the means of travel – the donkey. Now it’s a fairly sound assumption that Mary travelled on a donkey. Even with it, the journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem would have been at least a four-day ride – no mean feat for a thirty-something week pregnant woman. But still, it’s a guess nonetheless.

When they finally arrive in Bethlehem, there’s a great to-do about trying to find somewhere to stay the night. Admittedly it’s usually quite a comic scene: grumpy inn keeper after grumpy inn keeper come stomping down to answer the door in their blue stripe-y pyjamas (probably borrowed off Dad) to tell them that there’s ‘no room in the inn’. Finally, one kind soul takes pity and lets them stay in his stable. There, surrounded by animals, Mary gives birth to her son and lays him in a manger. True, Luke says that there were “no rooms left in the inn” (Luke 2:7b) but no stable is ever mentioned, and no animals: just the manger. There’s not even any biblical evidence that Jesus arrived the night that Mary and Joseph did – simply that he was born while they were there. It seems that in this instance, the popular culture version of the nativity might just be trying to and add a few more characters so that more children get some lines. Even if that line is just moo-ing like a cow. It’s fairly easy to see how the nativity story ends up looking a bit like the one in Love Actually, where Emma Thompson’s daughter plays a lobster. The impracticalities are self-explanatory on that one…

Next, the angels come to the shepherds and tell them of Jesus’ birth, upon which news they travel to Bethlehem to see him. That’s all fine and dandy, though the sheep or two that always seems to accompany the shepherds on their trip aren’t mentioned in the Bible. Oh and there’s no guiding star. But it’s with the arrival of the three kings that things get more interesting. Firstly, there’s no mention in the scripture that there were three kings at all. Instead, Matthew tells us that “some wise men” (Matthew 2:1) follow a star to Jerusalem and there meet King Herod (more on him later). The assumption that there were three of them comes from the later mention that they bring three gifts to the baby Jesus – gold, frankincense and myrrh. Finally something familiar: that particular detail isn’t made up. Secondly, and now we’re getting into a part of the story that is normally left out of school nativities, for obvious reasons; the Bible seems to suggest that the wise men didn’t visit Jesus in Bethlehem until roughly two years after his birth.

Confused? Well let me first start by explaining the next part of the story – in case your biblical knowledge only goes as far as the school nativity. The wise men, on visiting King Herod in Jerusalem, ask him about “the baby who was born to be the king of the Jews” (Matthew 2:2). To cut a long story short, Herod, who’s a bit of a tyrant, is threatened by this news and orders his soldiers “to kill all the baby boys in Bethlehem and in the surrounding area who were two years old or younger” (Matthew 2:16). What follows is pretty grisly stuff, and it’s understandable why it’s generally skimmed over in the popular nativity story. But how does any of this suggest that the wise men didn’t visit Jesus until he was about two years old? Well, why would Herod have killed all the male babies that were aged two and under if he thought that the child was only a few hours old? Not that I’m suggesting that the nativity should be extended to cover an extra two years; there’d certainly be a few more parents nodding off if it did. This last part of the story (or maybe it’s the beginning, depending on who you speak to) is a significant omission on the part of the commonly accepted nativity story – it reveals a kind of evil that considerably marrs the popular fairytale.

All over the world, Christmas is celebrated by millions of people as a time to be spent with loved ones, to wear silly jumpers and to consume inordinate numbers of calories. And for the majority, that’s all it means. Whether or not you believe in the story that the nativity tells, however, there’s something in the biblical narrative that’s of a greater importance than our child’s fairytale Christmas. It’s not simply about celebrating a birth in Bethlehem 2000 years ago, anymore than it’s about a fat old man that somehow makes it down the chimney to leave you presents and eat your mince pies. It’s about the struggle between good and evil in the world. Sure, Jesus got some pretty cushy presents, but he was also born into a society that rejected him; he spent his early years hiding from a king who wanted him dead. If nothing else, that ‘small’ detail would certainly make for a more radical primary school nativity.

So whether you find your hope in religion, in your friends and family, or in a few too many glasses of mulled wine this Christmas; remember that this is just one day in three hundred and sixty five days of the year, in which evil and suffering exists alongside the hazy, fireside afternoons and endless games of charades. So, if nothing else, enjoy your younger siblings’ nativity play, but remember that there’s a darker side to the story. And please, don’t take what you have this Christmas for granted.

Oh and sorry if I just ruined the fairytale nativity of your childhood. I expect the presents will make up for it.

Pippa Bailey

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