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An Undeceptions Podcast.
Just over 200 years ago, a young priest, Joseph Moore, wrote a six-stanza poem while assigned to a church in Austria. Two years later, he asked his friend, Franz Gruber, to set it to music, and Gruber created a melody and a guitar accompaniment similar to what I just played you. Deep in heavenly peace
The song was called Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht and was first sung on Christmas Eve in 1818 at St. Nicholas Church in Obendorf, Austria.
Today, according to Time magazine, Silent Night is the most popular Christmas song ever. In 2014, the magazine conducted a review of how many times Christmas songs had been recorded since 1978. It turns out Silent Night has twice as many copyrighted recordings as the runner-up, Joy to the World. Silent Night had 733 recordings.
Joy to the World was a distant second with 391. And I'm sure there are plenty of other copyrighted recordings since 2014. And it's a good thing that Silent Night is so popular because it contains very few of the popular myths about the Christmas story that many of the other carols convey. Today, tis the podcast before Christmas.
So we're diving into the fairy lights and tinsel to uncover some of the myths about Christmas. Things you might have thought were true, but probably aren't. And we'll look at a few of the common challenges to the history of Christmas that aren't as strong as some sceptical folks reckon. Sleep in heavenly. Sleep in heavenly. I'm John Dixon, and this is Undeceptions. Undeceptions
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This episode is brought to you by Zondervan Academic's Master Lectures. It's a streaming service to satisfy your curiosity and to help you understand the Bible with some of the world's leading Christian scholars. And you can head to zondervanacademic.com/undeceptions to get 50% off your first three months subscription. With the code "undeceptions50." Sounds easy.
Each episode of Undeceptions, we explore some aspect of life, faith, history, science, culture, or ethics that's either much misunderstood or mostly forgotten. And with the help of people who know what they're talking about, we're trying to undeceive ourselves and let the truth out.
And it's the week before Christmas, so we thought you might enjoy an episode we published back at the end of 2019, which seems more like a century ago, don't you reckon? It's vintage Undeceptions, but it's also classic Christmas fare, like a good turkey dinner or barramundi on the barbecue, if you're like me.
And I reckon a bunch of our new listeners may have missed this one in our back catalogue. So here it is. And we'll be back next week with a brand new episode for you.
This episode of Undeceptions is brought to you by Zondervan Academics' new book, ready for it? Mere Christian Hermeneutics, Transfiguring What It Means to Read the Bible Theologically, by the brilliant Kevin Van Hooser. I'll admit that's a really deep-sounding title, but don't let that put you off. Kevin is one of the most respected theological thinkers in the world today.
And he explores why we consider the Bible the word of God, but also how you make sense of it from start to finish. Hermeneutics is just the fancy word for how you interpret something. So if you want to dip your toe into the world of theology, how we know God, what we can know about God, then this book is a great starting point. Looking at how the church has made sense of the Bible through history, but also how you today can make sense of it.
Mere Christian Hermeneutics also offers insights that are valuable to anyone who's interested in literature, philosophy, or history. Kevin doesn't just write about faith, he's also there to hone your interpretative skills. And if you're eager to engage with the Bible, whether as a believer or as a doubter, this might be essential reading.
You can pre-order your copy of Mere Christian Hermeneutics now at Amazon, or you can head to zondervanacademic.com forward slash undeceptions to find out more. Don't forget, zondervanacademic.com forward slash undeceptions.
I've got in front of me a typical Christmas card. The scene is night, the sky is a deep dark blue, and the silhouette is that very familiar scene. Mary and Joseph are in a bare stable with straw on the ground and a thatched roof.
Weirdly, there doesn't seem to be any walls in this stable. It's basically open to the elements, which is not a very practical stable. Anyway, they're kneeling next to a manger, an animal feeding trough, and the animals themselves are gathering around in reverence. We've got cows, sheep, donkeys, the whole gang's there. It's like a scene out of The Lion King.
In the distance, three camels are bringing the three wise kings over the sandy hill to meet the baby Jesus. Off to the other side is Bethlehem, and one can only imagine we'll see the shepherds walking into the field soon enough. In the dark sky above the stable is, of course, the bright star. Cards like this dictate much of what many of us imagine about the original Christmas story.
What does Christmas mean to you? Honestly, even though I am a Catholic, it is literally just about the whole commercial side. Santa Claus, presents, spending time with family, roast dinner. For me, it's a family event. It's just all about getting together with the family, I guess. But yeah, we do get taught about the history, of course, because it's just really important. It's part of culture, I would say. Yeah. Hallelujah.
Silent Night doesn't throw up too many red flags. It was written by a priest, after all, who probably knew his Bible. Though you've got to wonder how silent the whole thing could have been. I've witnessed three births and they weren't exactly silent, and that's just my sobbing.
But the first stanza of the carol obviously brings up one of the biggest issues thoughtful people have with the whole Christmas story, the virgin birth. In fact, as we record this, there's quite a kerfuffle with the Australian shock jock Kyle Sandylands, who made some comments about the Virgin Mary not being a virgin at all. I thought Mary was his girlfriend, but apparently it was the mother. Indeed.
Yeah. And the mother lied, obviously, and told everyone, no, I got pregnant by a magical ghost. Bullshit.
You might believe everything that's written down 2,000 years ago to be absolutely accurate. A few things about the virgin birth, or virginal conception, as it's more accurately known. First, it's got nothing to do with avoiding sex in the Jesus story, which is what you often hear. The original culture which told this story was totally fine with sex and marriage and babies and everything.
They just said, and no doubt this came directly from Mary's own testimony, that this birth was different. The new beginning for humanity that the birth of Jesus enacts came about, the New Testament says, as a kind of new creation out of nothing. That's the point of the virgin birth. It's got nothing to do with a low view of sex.
Obviously, someone who doesn't believe in any kind of God and assumes the laws of nature are the only things governing the universe could never accept the virgin birth.
But if, like most people, you accept that there might be a mind behind the laws of nature, then there's no theoretical impossibility in a virgin birth. I mean, anyone who vaguely believes in some vague creator behind the laws of nature already admits, consciously or otherwise, that the creator has been able to establish laws
which allow two entire genetic histories to come together in conception to create a whole new individual life. If the mind behind the universe can do that miracle over deep time, why on earth couldn't he do it again, in miniature, instantly, without those two long genetic histories? But is there historical evidence for the virgin birth?
I don't think history can prove a miracle like this. All history can do is tell you what people of the past thought, how early they thought it, and how widespread the thought was.
So, for example, there is overwhelming evidence that people in Jesus' day thought he was a miracle worker. And you'll find that even non-Christian scholars agree Jesus did things everyone thought were miracles. But we can't say Jesus actually did miracles because that introduces philosophy and theology into history.
I believe in the virgin birth, but when I say that, I'm talking as a Christian, not just as a historian. The historical evidence for a virgin birth is limited. Two sources, not copied from each other, Matthew and Luke, both tell how Mary was a virgin when she conceived Jesus.
All the historian can say, as a historian, is that within a generation of Jesus, that's within the period when family members were still alive, there was a widespread conviction that Jesus' birth was miraculous.
If we don't believe in any kind of God, it doesn't matter how good the evidence was, we wouldn't believe it. But if you do believe in God, even in the vaguest sense, you are free to believe it if you think Matthew and Luke are trustworthy reporters in this case. That's about all we can say about the virgin birth. The first Noel the angel did say
Was to certain poor shepherds In fields where they lay In fields where they lay Keeping their sheep On a cold winter's night That was so deep Born is the King of Israel Noel, Noel, Noel
Born is the King of Israel. The word Noel comes to us via French from the Latin natalis, birth. Christmas was first called way back in 336 AD, Natus Christus in Bethlehem, Judei, birth of Christ in Bethlehem of Judea. It's nice that they've shortened it. So when was the first Noel? When was Jesus actually born?
Well, the first thing to say is probably not on December 25th, though I suppose there's a one in 365 chance that it was that date. It's well known that December 25 in the ancient Roman world was already a festival. It was the Natalis Solis Invicti, the birth or rebirth of the invincible sun. Basically, it was the big party they threw celebrating the return of longer days in a northern winter.
So did Christians just copy that celebration? Not really.
There are two theories for the choice of this date, and historians are a bit divided about this. The first is that some in the early church had thought Jesus must have been conceived on the date of his crucifixion, which they calculated as March 25. So nine months later was December 25. Then it would just be a happy coincidence that it fell on the same day as a Roman festival.
The second theory, which I quite like, is that as Christianity was fast becoming the dominant faith in the Roman Empire, the church decided not to cancel the great party that was already there for the return of the sun, S-U-N, but instead to reclaim it as a celebration of the coming of the Son of God.
But in all this, there was probably no serious suggestion that Jesus was actually born on December 25, any more than we all now believe that all horses were born on August 1. And to make things a little more complicated, all of this only applies to the Western history of the church. The date in the East, so that's like everything to the right of Greece,
keeps Christmas on the 6th of January. This was originally a celebration of Jesus' baptism, which was seen as a really big deal. And only later did they think they'll bundle it together with the birth of Jesus as well.
But what about the year of Jesus' birth? When exactly was Anno Domini, the year of the Lord? You might have thought the date of Jesus' birth was a no-brainer. He was born in the year 1, right? 1 AD. That's the whole thing. Unfortunately, things aren't so simple. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke, which were written independently of each other, by the way...
agree that Jesus was born while Herod the Great, the Rome-appointed king over Judea, was still alive. Matthew puts it plainly, in the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem. Now, according to pretty firm dates we have from another first century writer, Josephus, we know that Herod
ruled from 37 BC until his death in early 4 BC. So Jesus must have been born sometime before 4 BC. But how long before Herod's death was Jesus born?
Matthew implies it wasn't more than about two years, which brings us to anywhere between 6 and 4 BC. Luke provides another piece of the puzzle. He says that in the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Jesus was about 30 years old. Now, Tiberius was emperor from AD 14 to 37, so his 15th year was approximately AD 28.
Counting backwards, 30 years or so could take us to 6 BC at the limit, assuming that anything beyond 34 years starts to strain the description of about 30 years. All of this leads to a pretty broad consensus amongst scholars today that Jesus was born around 5 BC. Naturally, this raises a question. How could Jesus have been born five years before Christ?
The answer is actually simple. The man who gave us the calendar distinction between BC and AD, that's before Christ and Anno Domini in the year of the Lord, was an Italian mathematician, archivist and theologian named Dionysius Exius, whose name translates basically as Dennis the Little.
In the year 525, Pope St John asked Dennis to prepare a chronology based on the historical records at his disposal. Sifting through the available documents, Dennis calculated what he thought was the most likely year of the Lord.
It was then proposed that the Western Christian calendar should reflect his determination. It turns out that Dionysius, Dennis, missed the mark by a number of years. Given the limited historical data he had to work with, I think he did brilliantly, better than any of us could have done. But we now know the exact dates of figures like Herod the Great and Emperor Tiberius, so we can confidently place Jesus' birth about five years earlier than we previously thought, that is, around 5 BC.
By the way, this creates a perceived problem with the chronology in Luke's Gospel, because he says that the birth of Jesus took place around the time of a census conducted by the Roman governor Quirinius.
We know about a census conducted by Quirinius 10 years later in AD 6, so that can't be what Luke is referring to. Luke specifically says the first census when Quirinius was governor, so he reckons he knows of a couple. Anyway, it's a historical problem, but not as big as some people think. It's a little bit technical, so we'll post a link in the show notes to something I wrote about the Quirinius problem.
Where was Jesus born? In Bethlehem. Bethlehem. Bethlehem. Nazareth. Jerusalem. In Jerusalem. I don't know how to say it in English. I don't know. I'm sorry. Bethlehem. O come, all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant. O come, ye faithful.
Matthew and Luke both place Jesus' birth in Bethlehem.
But the thing is, many doubt this detail in the Christmas story. Scholars, I mean. They believe it to be a piece of pious place-dropping. Ancient King David, 1000 BC, was from Bethlehem. And so the gospel writers, so it's thought, wanted to associate their Lord with Israel's greatest monarch. So they invented him being born in Bethlehem.
In a pretty glaring overstatement, the famous Bishop John Shelby Spong writes, Was Jesus born in Bethlehem, the city of David? The answer is a very simple no. There is almost no possibility that this claim is a fact of history.
His argument is twofold. Firstly, the Gospels of Mark and John make no mention of Jesus being born in Bethlehem. Secondly, because one Old Testament prophecy says that the Messiah will come from Bethlehem, that's Micah 5.2, the Gospels had to place him there to make him look messianic. But things aren't really that simple. Just as important as the fact that Bethlehem isn't mentioned in Mark or John is the fact that it is mentioned in Luke and Matthew.
Surely the silence of two of the Gospels can't be louder than the affirmation of the other two, especially when we know that Luke and Matthew wrote independently of each other. Secondly, the fact that John and Mark say nothing about Jesus' birth in Bethlehem may actually neutralize Spong's second argument. Obviously, two of the Gospel writers felt no need to place their Messiah in Bethlehem.
So what's the evidence that Matthew and Luke put him there out of some necessity to make him look messianic? None. The argument dissolves. Do you know any of the lyrics to Away in a Manger?
No, and I wouldn't sing to them if I did. You've got a chance of me singing. I think I know most of them. Have a go at some. Away in a manger, no crib for a bed. Away in a manger, so sweet, something or other. It's been a while. Away in a manger, something, something, he lay. For little Lord Jesus to lay down his sweetheart.
A star in the night sky. Yeah, that's as far as I can remember. ♪ In a manger ♪ ♪ No crib for a bed ♪ ♪ The little Lord Jesus ♪ ♪ Laid down his sweet head ♪ ♪ The stars in the bright sky ♪ ♪ Down where he lay ♪ ♪ Little Lord Jesus asleep on the bed ♪
The traditional idea of Mary and Joseph having no family to stay with, so they went to an inn and they were rejected there too, probably isn't what the Gospel of Luke says about all of this.
The word inn is kataluma in Greek, and our knowledge of Greek usage suggests it can either mean an inn, like a guest house, or just the guest room in someone's actual house. It's likely that Luke chapter 2 is just saying that Joseph and Mary stayed with relatives in Bethlehem, but couldn't go in a normal bedroom, so they stayed in another part of the house, the kataluma. That's where the manger comes in.
The word manger is weird today. We only use it at Christmas time and you could be forgiven for thinking it's the special word for the bed reserved for the Son of God. The word is actually phatner in Greek. It just means the area for animals. It could be the trough for food, but more likely it just means the general area where you put your animals.
I know that sounds weird, but to ancient people it's no weirder than letting your dog sleep in your house. Yeah, that's anathema to some people. In the Dixon household we are dogs in house people and some of my family would want dogs on bed, which ain't gonna happen. Bethlehem was a tiny little town in the first century, probably no more than a couple of hundred people.
By the way, that means that the massacre of infants recorded in Matthew only involved a few babies. It's historical legend, not the Gospels, that have enlarged this scene in our minds.
Anyway, some houses used excellent caves. I've been in a couple of the Bethlehem caves myself. They're pretty cool. You could live in them. The manger might have just been one end of the cave or another part of the cave complex normally reserved for animals. We don't know the precise details. So there's scope for imagination, which I suppose is why the Christmas carols and the Christmas cards feel they can add stuff.
We've been given our parts in the Nativity play. And I'm the lobster. The lobster? Yeah! In the Nativity play? Yeah. First lobster. There was more than one lobster present at the birth of Jesus. Duh.
The one thing that is really striking when you turn to the Gospels themselves is that the whole birth of Jesus is told in fewer than 400 words, even less in Matthew's Gospel. That's about the length of just the intro to this podcast about all this stuff. Pick up a Gospel this Christmas. You may find lots of surprising stuff, some stuff missing and some stuff there you never imagined.
68-year-old Tirat was working as a farmer near his small village on the Punjab-Sindh border in Pakistan when his vision began to fail. Cataracts were causing debilitating pain and his vision impairment meant he couldn't sow crops.
It pushed his family into financial crisis. But thanks to support from Anglican Aid, Tirat was seen by an eye care team sent to his village by the Victoria Memorial Medical Centre. He was referred for crucial surgery. With his vision successfully restored, Tirat is able to work again and provide for his family.
There are dozens of success stories like Tarat's emerging from the outskirts of Pakistan, but Anglican Aid needs your help for this work to continue. Please head to anglicanaid.org.au forward slash Tarat.
We three kings of Orient are Bearing gifts we traverse afar
Field and fountain, moor and mountain, following yonder star. Oh, star of wonder, star of night, star with royal beauty bright. Westward leading, still proceeding, guide us to thy perfect light.
On our typical Christmas card, the star is usually shining bright and large right over the stable where Jesus lay. The Christmas star, or the Star of Bethlehem as it's known, is one of the most recognisable symbols of Christmas. But a star hanging over a particular place is not something you see every day. In fact, many would say it is not something that has ever been seen, not on the day of Jesus' birth or ever. The whole thing is a myth. Is that right?
The story is told only in Matthew's Gospel.
So you'll find that many historians just dismiss the account as a late accumulation to amp up the whole thing. With my Christian hat on, I can happily say I believe it. I've learned over the years to trust these gospels, like a dear friend. You might not feel it's wise to trust my friend, you may not know her, but I have reason to trust her. And that's how I feel about the gospels. But can we say more historically speaking? Not much.
But a bit. Hello, Luke speaking. G'day, Luke. John here. Hello again. That's our resident Undeceptions astrophysicist, Luke Barnes. You may remember him. He was my phoner friend in Episode 3. What are the main...
possible theories astronomically for the star of Bethlehem? The main sort of theories are as follows, all right? So here we go, strap in. There was, we know, we can trace the night sky backwards in time quite nicely because it's a fairly simple sort of physics system. We can go back and work out that there was what's called a triple conjunction of
of Jupiter and Saturn in about 7 BC. Now what happens is every now and then Jupiter and Saturn will look like they're in a similar sort of place in the night sky. That's a conjunction. If that happens at the right time of year, not only will they come together, they'll actually come together three times over the course of a couple of months.
And the story goes, okay, Jupiter represents the king. Saturn is somehow, ask a historian like yourself, associated with the Jewish nation. And so a king has been born in Judea. So let's go and see that.
That's probably a fairly popular theory. When you say that a new star has appeared, the first thing that an astronomer is going to think of is a nova, which is a nuclear explosion on the surface of an old star, or a supernova, which is a massive star totally blowing up.
And if that happens, it will be very bright. It'll be a new star in the night sky. That would be something pretty amazing. It's not something predictable. It's not something that happens every dot, dot, dot. That's something they've seen before, but it is something that, you know, the ancients knew about Nova, but this is still a pretty amazing big thing. Again, if
If it's a supernova, supernovas are great big things, and we can work out from looking at their remnants how long ago they blew up. So we know that there was a supernova that went off in 1054, and we both have historical evidence for that. And when we do the astrophysics, we can wind the clock back and bam, 1054. So that's very nice. There's none that lands us at about 6 BC or 5 BC. So that's a problem. Maybe we just haven't found it yet. The best theory, I reckon, this is my last one.
is a comet. So comets were sometimes called stars in the ancient world. So star was perhaps a more general term, meaning something bright in the night sky. So I'm told Josephus and Pliny call comets stars. They're more often a bad omen, but sometimes they can be a good omen. And there is some connection, there's a passage in Numbers which talks about, which is taken to be
you know, a prediction of the messiah which talks about a star and a scepter and if you think of a sword with a, you know, a big saber or something with a big tail, a comet's tail might stand, might be that sort of thing.
In particular, because comets move through the solar system, it's exactly the sort of thing that could be in the east and then in the west and then in the south. And standing over Bethlehem would make a bit of difference if the star is on the horizon, but its tail is pointing upwards.
it would look like a great big pointer down to a particular point, depending on where you are. I mean, it wouldn't point at a particular place. Where it pointed depends on where you are. But it's the closest thing we have to some sort of
pointing over, the standing over. So we've looked through the records. Halley's Comet was around but in about 12 BC, so that's too early, that's no good. There's a comet recorded by the Chinese in about 5 BC, so Colin Humphreys who's written on this thinks that's
That's the one that's looking good. The problem is our records of that are kind of incomplete. We're not even totally sure it's a comet or some debate about that. It sounds like a comet, but there's no records there of it moving across the night sky, certainly not doing the sort of east to west to south sort of thing. And so one theory that's put forward by a guy called Colin Nicol, who wrote an interesting book called The Great Christ Comet, is that
is that there was a comet in 6 BC and not only can he, you know, he did, he was a Bible scholar, but he also did an awful lot of astronomy tracing out, okay, if it did this exact sort of orbit, it would not only do exactly
the sort of east to west to south kind of thing. It would stand over Bethlehem at just the right time, and it would even come towards us out of the constellation Virgo or the Virgin. So there's an awful lot in that book. It's quite an amazing book, actually. But those are the theories. It's a great big, we're not totally sure, unfortunately, from the astronomers, but there are at least some sort of interesting candidates.
Love it, mate. It's when too much information is barely enough. I should say, Kepler was trying to work this out 400 years ago. So, you know, this is a very long debate. Very quickly, though, right? Thanks so much, mate. All right. See you again.
Who are you? We are three wise men. What? We are three wise men. Well, what are you doing cringing at two o'clock in the morning? That doesn't sound very wise to me. We are astrologers. We have come from the east. Is this some kind of joke? We wish to praise the infant. We must pay homage to him. Homage? You're all drunk. It's disgusting. Oh, mercy me. It was tales about
Come on out. No, no, we must see him. Go and pray someone else is back. Go on. We were led by a star. Led by a bottle of all light. Go on out. We must see him. We have brought presents. Out. Gold, frankincense, mar. Well, what didn't you say? He's over there.
That's the introduction to the 1979 Monty Python movie Life of Brian. Some won't like that we just played it, but, you know, I quite like it. The film tells the story of Brian Cohen, a young Jewish man who is born on the same day as and next door to Jesus Christ and is mistaken for the Messiah. And we just heard the scene where the three wise kings come to visit and they come with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.
The Christmas image is well ingrained. There are a bunch of carols that we sing that reference them. And by the light of that same star, three wise men came from country far. Bearing gifts, we traverse afar, field and fountain, moor and mountain, following yonder star.
Sages leave your contemplations, brighter visions beam afar. Seek the great desire of nations, ye have seen his natal star. What parts are true? Where did it come from? How many wise men were there? Did they really ride on camels? Who were they? Kings? Wise men? What are magi? Did they really bring gifts? And what do the gifts signify? Later Christian tradition actually named these three wise guys. Gaspar, Balthazar and Melchior.
But that has no basis in history. They probably weren't even kings. Sorry to disappoint. They're called magi, from which we get the word magic. It just means they were caught wise men. They specialised in reading the stars and other signs and advising people in power of the best way to act in politics, battles, marriage and so on.
And actually, there's no reason to think there were only three. That's just based on the fact that there are three gifts, gold, frankincense, and myrrh. So we like to envisage one magi per gift.
Now, there could have been two magi with three gifts. There could have been 37 magi with three gifts. The real focus is on the gifts themselves, gifts appropriate to royalty. Gold, of course. Frankincense is just an aromatic resin of certain treats. We might say a valuable sweet incense. And myrrh is the aromatic resin of bushes. But the interesting thing is it's often used in embalming offerings.
the dead in the ancient world. So there may be, just maybe, a hint not only of Jesus' royalty, but also of his death. What the manger and all that hints at at the front of the story, the cross makes plain at the end of the story. God humbles himself to serve us.
Perhaps the most important point in the Magi story is that they are pagans. They are foreigners. They are literally from the East, the Gospel says.
Which probably means Babylon or what we would call Iraq. Matthew's Gospel is normally said to be the most Jewish of all the Gospels. But here is a hint right at the beginning that this story is for all the nations. The wisest guys around travelled a huge distance just to bow down. What does Christmas mean for you? Is it a historical event or does it mean something else?
Okay, first and foremost it means family, getting together with family, right? And second, it's a religious thing. That's basically the way I look at it. It used to be historical, I think, but it's more family get-together now. It's just exciting to get family together from all over Australia. That's what it's become now. Family get-togethers and presents and, yeah, just having some good food. Joy of family.
Yes, that's mainly it, yes. And I think too, Christmas, apart from Jesus, makes people more spirited and light-hearted and happy. Well, I'm Christian, so I think that's like a big part of my religion, birth of Jesus. And also just being with family, spending time together, just, yeah, being around people you love. MUSIC
Let's press pause. I've got a five-minute Jesus. It's perhaps odd to begin a Christmas reflection with an insight from the Buddha. But Siddhartha Gautama said something I find really compelling and apt for this time of year. It's sometimes in the happiest moments, he said, that sadness pierces through.
Buddhism, of course, goes much further than that and includes happiness itself in its definition of suffering, because even joy is transitory, vulnerable to sadness. I can't quite go that far, but there's something in it. There is so much to be happy about in this Christmas period. The gifts, the food, family reunions, holidays, and for some, the spiritual meaning of the season.
But many of us also catch ourselves pondering the sadness of this time of year. Feeling alone in a crowd, feeling pity for others in our midst who don't have the plenty that we do. Maybe feeling regret when we're with the people we love best because of the way they've treated us or we've treated them.
John Keats, the poet, once said, I, in the very temple of delight, veiled melancholy, has her sovereign shrine. There's sadness amidst the joy. ABC journalist Julia Baird once made a similar point in a Christmas piece she wrote. She noted that the world has taken some very strange turns in recent years. This happy period is also a time for melancholy. She writes...
Here in coastal Australia, our streets are studded with opening frangipani, the air is thick with heat and salt, the sea swells are climbing and falling, tides drawn by the moon, school uniforms folded away for the year and a sticky summer awaits. But an odd feeling of impotent despair has infected our conversations and celebrations.
Aleppo, Brexit, climate change, fracturing global accord, partisan ugliness and an atmosphere of cheap shots and short-term gain. Gut has triumphed over grace, she writes.
Her answer to the dilemma is found in the title of her article, We Must Strive to Find Our Own Peace in a Brutal World. She offers some nice examples, actually, listening to the wind in the trees, marvelling at a child's play, wondering at the beauty of music, enjoying the splash of the ocean against the skin. She doesn't quite offer this as a resolution. She merely urges us to let life's small joys permeate
pierce the sadness, just as the sadness often pierces the joy. As a daily coping strategy, I like it. It's certainly more Christian than Buddhist to allow life's pleasures to point us to something beyond. But of course, Christmas invites us to something much deeper. And I suspect Julia Baird knows this.
Christmas isn't about wrapping up a strange and troubling year with a festival of simple human pleasures. Traditionally, Christmas is about joy piercing the sadness, fully and forever. Anno Domini 1 was every bit as mixed and weird as 2019.
Mary and her little family might not have had Aleppo, Brexit and partisan ugliness and all the rest of it, but they did have Emperor Augustus flexing his muscles in a worldwide census designed to extract more tax and tighten his grip on his vassal states. And they had the brutality of Herod the Great, a man who got rid of his own offspring on a hunch and thought nothing of doing the same to the infants of Bethlehem.
Then there was the unplanned and scandalous pregnancy, together with their 120-kilometre journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem, probably on foot, with all due respect to the donkey of the Christmas cards. And when they arrived, there's no room, there's a manger. The whole story is very strange, very mixed. Sadness and joy lie side by side.
The Gospel writers seem to emphasise the strangeness by repeating the words, in a manger, in a manger. The phrase appears three times in quick succession in Luke chapter 2. Luke seems to be driving a point home. And it's a point easily lost on us. What could be more clichéd at Christmas time than a baby in a manger? But a manger, of course, is an animal feeding area.
Whatever it precisely means, the point is the same and it's repeated three times for effect. God has stepped onto the world stage at the lowest point on earth. An infant squeezed out of a guest room, relegated to the area for animals. It's the bottom of the world.
At the very moment Augustus is flexing his muscles and Herod is shaking his fist, God, we're told, enters the mess, humbly, from below. And he does so in order to turn the whole thing upside down. There's a part of the Christmas story that's often overlooked. Mary, the mother of Jesus, responds to the news that she will bear the Son of God with a song. In church, it's called the Magnificat. It says...
Amen.
Amidst all the interpretations of Christmas we hear at this time of year, from priests, politicians and advertisers, we'd do well to listen to the mother at the centre of it all.
According to Mary, Christmas is about God scattering the proud, bringing down rulers from their thrones, lifting up the humble. It's about God turning things upside down, which is really the right way up. And God does this not from on high with the power of Augustus or the brutality of Herod. That would just be more of the same. God playing the old human power game, just with more force.
God achieves his purposes from below in the humility of a manger, with lowly shepherds as first witnesses and foreign magi as first worshippers. Everything about the Christmas story, indeed the whole story of Jesus actually, says that God will reverse the mess by first getting his hands dirty. He will conquer by humbling himself.
He will mend the world by being wounded. He will save us by sacrificing himself. The manger is a throne in the sense that it's a sign that God intends to turn everything upside down. Grace will triumph over gut and Mary's song will become the world's song. Joy will pierce the sadness fully and forever. You can press play now.
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I hope you enjoyed that trip down memory lane and are ready for the joy of Christmas. If you're looking for an easy but meaningful gift for a loved one this Christmas, you could give them a subscription to Undeceptions Plus. They'll get all the extras and if you sign them up for a full year, they'll get an Undeceptions t-shirt too. We've got some great stuff planned for our Undeceivers in 2023.
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Next episode will be a brand new one and we're going to explore the controversial claim, certainly controversial to any Jewish listeners and perhaps unbelievable to some of my skeptical listeners, the claim that the Jesus of the New Testament Gospels in fact inhabits all the pages that came before. Every story, every prophecy, every ritual, every law of what Christians call the Old Testament.
See ya, and Merry Christmas.
Undeceptions is hosted by me, John Dixon, produced by Kayleigh Payne and directed by Mark Hadley. Sophie Hawkshaw is on socials and membership. Alistair Belling is our writer and researcher. Siobhan McGuinness is our online librarian. And Lindy Leveson remains my wonderful assistant. Editing by Richard Humwe and special thanks to our series sponsor, Zondervan Academic, for making this Undeception possible. Undeceptions is the flagship podcast of Undeceptions.com. Letting the truth out.
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