Every Christmas people are bombarded with images of the Nativity in Christmas cards, the lyrics of songs and Nativity plays. Yet many of the images embedded in our minds are pure tradition. In fact, there is a lot that we do not know. This is the story …
Background
Every December, churches across Britain light candles, sing carols and songs, and retell the story of Christ’s birth. Amid the Christmas trees, lights, tinsel, nativity plays and familiar readings from Luke and Matthew, many of us assume we know more about the original Christmas than we actually do. In truth, both the Bible and history leave much unsaid about that first holy night, and there is a lot that we just do not know, and maybe never will.
How old was Mary?
Mary is featured on cards, Nativity scenes and in icons as a young woman. We don’t know what she looked like, nor how old she was, although we imagine she was quite young. Isaiah’s prophecy (Isaiah 7:14) was that a young maiden implied as a virgin would give birth. She was unmarried and Jesus was her “firstborn” (Luke 2:7) at a time when women wed at an early age. Two further clues that she was quite young, probably a teenager, are that she was still alive at the crucifixion (John 19:25), and she seems to have supplied the stories to Luke when he wrote his Gospel many decades later (Luke 2:19).
How did they travel to Bethlehem?
Our carols and cards typically show Mary travelling on a donkey to Bethlehem. The donkey is not mentioned in the Bible, it is just assumed. It seems unlikely that a pregnant woman would want the discomfort of an unruly donkey over a ninety mile journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem. The route they took and how they travelled is unknown. It is also not known if they travelled alone or as part of a larger group, which is quite plausible. Luke just says that Joseph left Nazareth and took Mary to Bethlehem with him (Luke 2:4-5).
Which day was Jesus born on?
Despite our firm cultural fixation on December 25th, there’s nothing in the Gospels that gives us a date for Jesus’s birth. There are theories but they are all based on assumptions which can’t be ascertained for sure. The December date is a tradition. It is a date to remember the birth, without asserting that it was that exact date.
What was the weather like when Jesus was born?
The traditional date of December 25, puts the birth in winter and sometimes in snow, but that is a factor of North European or North American weather. The carols we sing speak of the “bleak midwinter” when “snow lay snow on snow”. The reality is that we do not know what the weather was like when Jesus was born. It does occasionally snow in Bethlehem, but it is relatively rare and seldom settles. In the Bible snow was associated with Mount Hermon and Lebanon (Jeremiah 18:14). We might dream of a white Christmas but Joseph and Mary didn’t.
Which year was Jesus born?
Nor do we know the year when Jesus was born. It was not the year zero, because there wasn’t one - dating goes from 1 BC to 1 AD. There are theories about which year Jesus was born based on historical assumptions, or astronomical movements, but we do not know for sure. Estimates of Jesus’s birth vary from 8 BC to 1 BC. One approach to estimate the year of Jesus’s birth is based on the fact that it was probably about two years before King Herod died, which most scholars put at 4 BC. Most books place it around 6 BC, which is ironic if you know that BC means “Before Christ”.
The other means is to take Jesus’s stated age of "about 30 years" (Luke 3:22) when he began preaching and add the assumed three years of his ministry, and then deduct about 33 years from the date of the crucifixion, which most scholars think was 33 AD. The problem with that is that a birth in about 6 BC and crucifixion in 33 AD makes Jesus too old, which means we have got at least one of these assumptions wrong. So, we don’t know exactly.
Was Jesus born in a stable?
Christmas cards and Nativity scenes set Jesus’s birth in a wooden stable, often with animals. The Greek word traditionally translated as “inn” in Luke 2 more likely means “guest room”. The Bible does not mention a stable - this is inferred from the mention of a manger. Joseph may have taken Mary to a relative’s home where the only available space was among the animals, or in a lower-level area where the family kept livestock at night. The presence of a manger (Luke 2:7) suggests animals, but none are mentioned, and the shepherds were watching sheep in the fields, not sitting with them inside. Whether there were any animals there or not, and if so which ones, we do not know.
How long were they in Egypt?
The text tells us that Joseph took Mary and Jesus and they fled to Egypt (Matthew 2:13), but we do not know where in Egypt they lived, nor how long they lived there, although the Coptic Orthodox Church has traditions about where they lived. The text tells us that they went to Nazareth after Herod’s son Archelaus (Matthew 2:22) was on the throne of Judea, but we do not know how long he was on the throne before they decided not to go to his territory. Jesus was 12 when he went to the Temple (Luke 2:42) and showed his learning, and the text implies that that had been an annual event (Luke 2:41), so they had been living in Galilee a few years by then.
Did Jesus speak Egyptian?
In Season 1, Episode 6 of The Chosen it has Jesus speaking Egyptian and explaining that he had learnt it in Egypt, which is plausible, but we do not know. Indeed, had the holy family been in Egypt for a number of years, enough for Jesus to learn the language then it is likely some of his brothers and sisters were born to Joseph and Mary there, but we do not know.
Why don’t we know?
Tradition and imagination has filled in the gaps in the Bible narrative. All four Gospels tell of the crucifixion and the resurrection, but only Matthew and Luke narrate the incidents of the birth, and even then, they tell of different events, which we dovetail into a coherent narrative, which they were not. Even the genealogies of Jesus do not tally. Our nativity imagination has fused both Gospel stories into a single tableau, with all its misleading implications. Tradition fills in the gaps which are culturally encoded in songs, crib scenes, stained glass windows, Nativity plays and Christmas cards. What actually happened might be so different to what we imagine that it might shock us. Mark doesn’t even mention Jesus’s birth and starts his Gospel with Jesus’s baptism, and John summarises the whole birth of Jesus in a few words - that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14).
The humility of not knowing
In an age that prizes facts and certainty, it can feel uncomfortable to admit how little we know about the first Christmas, and how the dating and the setting of many of the events remains a mystery. The problem with having too much confidence in the text is that we read things between the lines, assume our interpretations are the right ones, and build man-made doctrines (Isaiah 29:13, cited in Matthew 15:9). It is humbler to admit that we just do not know many things for sure. In hindsight we might have liked Matthew and Luke to have asked Mary more questions and given us a bit more context and a few more details. There is no harm in historical curiosity, and no harm in theories, but we do not know how, nor exactly when, the first Christmas happened, but the important thing is that it did happen.
The Nicene Creed summarises it as, “For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven, was incarnate from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and was made man." The rest is just details.
