What Do You Do With a Chocolate Jesus? (8 page)

The Dutch called the legendary saint “Sinter Klaus” and, once they brought him to America, the name morphed into “Santa Claus.” In 1822, Clement Clark Moore, an Episcopal minister, embellished the Santa legend with his classic,
A Visit from Saint Nicholas
, better known as
’Twas the Night Before Christmas.
Moore is the guy who named the eight reindeer and had Santa slipping into the house through the chimney. (You know, between Santa, the Easter Bunny, and visits from various angels, there’s a lot of breaking-and-entering in Christian lore.)

There was no consensus on what Santa looked like, but Moore made him a jolly, jelly-bellied elf. Years later, political cartoonist Thomas Nast, who became famous for drawing caricatures of Boss Tweed and other New York robber barons, decided to draw the generous Santa Claus in the same tubby profile as the city fat-cats. The image stuck.

As a gift-giver beloved by children, it was only a matter of time before Saint Nick was co-opted by retailers, who enthroned him in their stores. By the time of the American Civil War, the department store Santa was an institution.

The bearded, red-and-white clad Santa image gradually emerged in the early 20
^th
century and was later popularized in the 1930s by famous Coca-Cola ads in which he wore the company colors. His emergency reindeer, Rudolph, was created in 1939 in a jingle written by an advertising copywriter at Montgomery Ward. The song was recorded by Gene Autry and it became a hit.

Since then, every generation has carped about the increasing commercialization of Christmas. Yet, in America, more people attend church on Christmas now than ever before. Personally, I miss the drunks in the streets.

Wise Men from the East

Okay, a few observations about the Wise Men from the East who came to visit the Christ child. First, Matthew is the only one who mentions them. Second, the Bible doesn’t say how many there were. Some traditions said two. St. Augustine thought there were twelve. It was a 2
^nd
century pope who started the tradition of
three
Wise Men, apparently because they brought three gifts: gold, frankincense and myrrh—the last two items being forms of dried tree sap used in perfumes and incense. What every newborn needs.

The Wise Men are called the Magi, a Persian word for a priest or astrologer from the Zoroastrian religion (the one that likely produced Mithraism). As astrologers, they paid attention to the stars—something Jewish priests didn’t do. This is why three rabbis didn’t show up with a jug of Manischewitz and a mutual funds starter kit. But notice something here:

…wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, saying, “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the East, and have come to worship him.” [Matt. 2:1–2]

 

Now, if the Wise Men were
from
the East and they saw a star
in
the East, they would have journeyed
toward
the East, which would have put them in Afghanistan and not Judea. (Unless, of course, they meant they were in the East when they saw the star.) More importantly, who told them the star signified the King of the Jews? The Jews didn’t; they didn’t practice astrology. And why would Persian astrologers want to worship a Jewish king anyway?

As for them being three
kings
from the Orient, that idea was dreamed up by Tertullian, an early Church father who wanted to tie Jesus to an Old Testament prophecy about “kings bearing gifts.” It was meant to symbolize the submission of the highest earthly authorities to Christ. But Tertullian made it up.

By the 8
^th
century, the Wise Men had become individual characters: Melchior (an old man), Casper (middle-aged), and Balthazar (a youth, probably from Ethiopia, and therefore black).

The Magi followed the star to Jerusalem, and there they met up with Judea’s King Herod, who felt threatened by the birth of this so-called “king.” He asked the Wise Men to find Jesus and report back so that
he
could worship the child as well. (Yeah, sure.) The Magi smelled a rat. So, after they swung by Bethlehem to drop off their gifts, they hightailed it back to the East.

While Matthew makes Herod out to be quite the monster, he wasn’t all that bad. He was a competent Jewish king with the thankless role of reigning over Judea under the watchful eye of the Romans. It was a difficult balancing act, and he generally pulled it off. He tried to win the respect of his subjects but, with a kingdom full of zealous priests dreaming of a messiah to replace him, he wasn’t going to win any popularity contests.

The story’s claim that Herod worried about a would-be Jewish king isn’t quite credible because he was old by this time; he’d be unlikely to sweat the prospect of a rival who wouldn’t come of age until he was dead. Furthermore, if he was intent on locating Jesus, he didn’t need the Magi to tell him the infant’s location. His troops could have followed the Wise Men to Bethlehem. Or they might have followed that giant star pointing right at the manger! You know, the one the Magi used? The one they saw from another
country?

The Star of Bethlehem

Just what was the Star of Bethlehem? A miracle? A myth? A natural phenomenon? A lot of science-can-explain-the-Bible types have agonized over the Christmas Star, attempting to explain it as a real astronomical event. They calculate the orbits of comets and search the past for supernovas that might have coincided with Jesus’ birth. They speculate that it wasn’t a “Star in the East” but rather a “
sign
in the east” that might have been the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in the constellation of Pisces—the constellation of the Jews. Something like this might have inspired the story. A lot of Discovery Channel airtime has been consumed with these attempts to reconcile science with faith. Unfortunately, they all fail, and for a couple of simple reasons.

First, there’s no astronomical phenomenon of any kind that could guide Wise Men for hundreds of miles to a pinpoint location on earth. Except for a meteor, which would have put a crimp in the whole evening, what happens in space stays in space. You can gallop towards a star all you want. It will never lead you to a particular city, much less a specific Motel VI in Bethlehem.

The only kind of “star” that could do this would be the thingy you see on a typical Christmas card: A glowing orb that looks like it’s hovering a few hundred yards above the sleepy suburbs of Bethlehem, beaming a spotlight down to where Jesus lay asleep in the hay.

Okay, fine then. It had to be a miracle star. Well, why not? It was a night when virgins were giving birth. Ah, but there’s another problem. If Wise Men could see it from another country, anyone living closer to Bethlehem would have seen it, too. By the time the three wise guys showed up, there’d be standing room only at the inn. Everyone would have flocked to the manger, including the Romans.

But the Gospels have nobody but the Magi seeing the star. Even shepherds tending their flocks nearby were told by an angel about the baby Jesus. Fact is, there’s no real object that would be visible to astrologers hundreds of miles away but not to shepherds down the street. Nor would so many people ignore something like that. It doesn’t add up. The Star of Bethlehem is a myth, just like the stars reported over the delivery rooms of other virgin born god-men.

Oh, and here’s a bit of trivia you can share over your next cup of eggnog: According to Matthew, by the time the Magi found Jesus, he was living in a house:

When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy; and going into the house they saw the child with Mary his mother… [Matt. 2:10–11]

 

Maybe the innkeeper came through after all.

The Slaughter of the Innocents

Then Herod…killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time which he had ascertained from the wise men. [Matt. 2:16]

 

It would have been awfully sloppy of Herod to order the death of all males under two if the baby he was after was a newborn. Some think the passage suggests Jesus was two years old by the time the Wise Men found him. Whatever the case, this “slaughter of the innocents,” a phrase Matthew borrows from the prophet Jeremiah, had to be fictional. As a puppet king of Rome, Herod didn’t have the authority to order mass executions. While the Romans could be brutal in warfare, they did follow the rule of law. Given the manpower such a massacre would require, they’d need a really good reason to do this, and Jewish prophecies about a messiah wouldn’t cut it. Besides, if such an event had actually occurred, there would’ve been an insurrection. Judean Jews had rioted over far less egregious offenses than this, yet there’s no record outside the Bible of a mass infanticide, or of any reaction to it. Surely somebody would have written this down long before the author of Matthew did eighty years later.

To skeptics, the story is an echo of the Moses legend, where the pharaoh ordered Egyptian midwives to kill Hebrew babies at birth to control the growing population. It’s why the baby Moses ended up floating down the Nile. As it is, Jesus was saved when his parents retreated to another country—Egypt—until Herod died. Matthew is the only Gospel that mentions this major side trip. Because the writer is so set on linking Jesus to the Old Testament, it’s no surprise that he got the baby Jesus into the birth country of Moses.

Furthermore, the two Gospels that tell this birth story disagree with each other. Matthew never mentions the census, the manger, or the shepherds tending their flocks. Luke never mentions the Star of Bethlehem, the Magi, nor Herod’s slaughter of the innocents. Instead, Luke simply has Jesus circumcised eight days after his birth. (The early Church claimed at one point that they possessed his foreskin; apparently they didn’t throw anything away.) After this, Luke says Jesus is taken to Jerusalem for ritual purification, and then back home to Nazareth. No slaughter, no flight to Egypt, none of Matthew’s horror story. If it were true, how could Mark, Luke and John miss all that? It’s a mystery.

The Year of Living Dangerously

We know almost nothing about the first thirty years of Jesus’ life beyond an eerie little episode when he’s about twelve and is found praying to his “Father” in a synagogue. He must have had an unremarkable childhood because, when he begins his missionary work at age thirty, everyone is surprised by the miracles he performs. You’d think being born to a virgin under a star would have prepared them for this.

By the reckonings in Mark
, Matthew
, and Luke, everything we know of Christ’s adulthood comes from the final year of his life. Jesus became a carpenter like his father. That is, his
other
father. The human one. (I suppose he had to buy two neckties for Father’s Day.) There is no indication he ever married, or even had a girlfriend—and no, I’m not suggesting
that.
Not being married, however, would have made him the exception in first century Palestine where men, especially a teacher or rabbi, would normally have been set up with a wife. Even today, unmarried men of a certain age (like mine) are considered a bit suspect. And no, I’m not suggesting
that.
(Not that there’s anything
wrong
with it, of course.)

Some scholars looking at heretical accounts of Jesus speculate that he had an intimate relationship with Mary Magdalene, who was one of his most prominent disciples and a financial supporter. Many get really hot and bothered about this point, but even some clergy admit that being married with children would not have undermined Jesus’ message or authority. It might even have helped the Family Values argument.

And just for the record, Mary Magdalene was not a prostitute. That was the idea of a sixth century pope, who figured that if she
had
been a prostitute and could still be forgiven, anyone could attain God’s grace. It was a nice idea, but Mary’s rep paid a price for a long time. Eventually, however, they did make her a saint.

Many religions, biblical and otherwise, equate celibacy and virginity with purity, and people like their religious leaders pure. But in the early centuries A.D., Catholic priests had the option of getting married and having families. Even medieval popes had children, sometimes with wives and sometimes with concubines. The celibate, unmarried, hands-off priesthood we think of today evolved over centuries and didn’t become official until 1139. At that point, Pope Gregory VII made existing marriages among priests null and void, and their wives were demoted to concubines, which are basically live-in whores—except there was no sex allowed. I’m sure everyone was thrilled.

There are disagreements over why this was done. One claim is that celibacy represents a body-and-soul commitment to God. Another says it was instituted to ensure that a deceased priest’s property ended up with the Church instead of with his descendents. Thomas Aquinas argued that celibacy was a Church idea, not God’s, and nowadays there are calls by some Catholics to allow priests to marry again. Don’t expect any quick action on this, however. Popes aren’t generally worried about the issue, and it’s not as if women are lining up to land a man who wears a flowing frock on holidays and has no experience in bed.