While it is the case that the majority of Christianity would find my theological beliefs unpalatable and while I'm sure they also leave some people trying to figure out why I call myself Christian, I have always loved the Christmas season. That might have more to do with family traditions and experiences growing up and my love of all things winter and hot cocoa while it's snowing but I also love a good story.
The wonderful part of the birth stories for me is that we essentially have a family who, for whatever reason, has fudged the cultural expectations of there day a bit. Joseph got Mary pregnant before their "marriage" was officially official. The sticky wicket in which they found themselves, however, had more to do with political expectations. Rome was in the middle of making sure they were getting all of there taxes (as empires do) from everyone they "owned" and it was decreed by the provincial governor that every man (along with his family, because, ya know, only men count) was to return to their place of birth in order to be counted and taxed accordingly. It was a bit of a hooplah and Mary was in her third trimester. I imagine Traveling with a very pregnant woman is no big deal. I mean, there's only the threat of early labor, dangerous traveling conditions, potentially life threatening situations; if ever there were such a thing as a cake walk, this would be it. They didn't really have a choice, so they went.
Thankfully, mercifully, gracefully they arrived in Bethlehem without major incident. I say major because I can imagine there were myriad and justified amounts of discomfort, complaining and anger from everyone involved. What I mean to say is everyone arrived alive. But of course, owing perhaps to the slower pace which they were forced to take on account of Mary's very pregnant condition, one of the few places left to stay was somebody's stable. Soon after Mary went into labor. We have no idea how long or how hard that labor was for Mary (thanks, undoubtedly, to the male writers of the gospels and their keenly honed sense of important details). From what I can cobble together from the women in my life, that shit ain't easy. It's absolutely true that said labor involved lots of blood, body fluids, ungodly amounts of pain and a healthy stream of cursing unleashed in Joseph's direction. Mary probably called him a viper a time or two which in today's parlance translates to something like, "Joseph, you fucking asshole, this is all your fault," (I looked it up).
Anyway, they did it. Mary gave birth to a very loud baby, wrapped him in some blankets and laid him in a feeding trough as is the customary thing to do...kind of (but not really at all). As good Jews they took the baby after eight days had passed circumcised him and bestowed upon him the most godly name they could think of, Jesus (or Yeshua or Joshua or something or other; the point is the name is actually quite ordinary). And later, as is prescribed in the Torah, they presented Jesus at the temple in Jerusalem with a sacrifice honoring their god, their culture and their ancestors.
The point of all of this has nothing to do with Jesus as god's son born to save the world from itself. That's not really my thing. The miracle is in the fundamental and ordinary experience of creating and caring for life. The wildly divergent emotions and expectations and everyday life of people sharing the struggles and joys of bringing a child into their lives. The miracle is that life happens in some of the most peculiar and ordinary and exceptional ways. For myself, there's no place for some fabricated fanfare about a virgin birth or a chorus of angels and there's no need for shepherds and wise men paying homage to a new king (although it does make for nice story-telling). I feel like and think that the point has something more to do with the fact that the birth of and care for any child in any place at any time should be enough to call all us to hope (and act!) for peace and love to reign on Earth. I think we would do well to pay more attention to those mundane things in life, to remember that ordinary doesn't preclude the experience of the sacred or transcending but that the ordinary is very much the heart of what is sacred and transcendent.
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