A Few Thoughts on Christmas

It's frozen out there, blistering cold.  To put it frankly, it is cold as balls.  Certainly, it seems as if the Earth itself were trying to kill us as its fruits recede into dried yellow grass and bare skeletal branches to deny sustenance to the living, while the cold alone could be enough to take a man without shelter or sufficient coverings.  It's a time of year that, taken on its own terms, brings to the fore the uncomfortable mortality of our existence, and yet, in our indomitable human spirit, generations before have seen fit to reform the world before our eyes into one more tolerable.

Christmas is technically a Christian holiday, but at this point, it's also a cultural holiday outside of that.  There's a whole history to the December date and festive traditions, much of which has to do with the early Christians adapting the pagan pre-Christian festivals surrounding the winter solstice, like Yule and Saturnalia, but whether you take it literally or symbolically (or both), the Christmas story offers something valuable to the human experience, especially at this time of year.  I'm not actually a devotee of a particular faith, but I like the Bible stories for what they reveal about human experience dating back hundreds, even thousands of years ago, and the poetic writing of the King James Version doesn't hurt.  Consider the Gospel of Luke, probably the best known rendition of the Christmas story, popularly used in pageants and recited by Linus Van Pelt in the 1965 TV special A Charlie Brown Christmas.
"And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed.  (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.)  And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city.  And Joseph went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was one of the house and lineage of David:) To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child.  And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered.  And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room in the inn.  And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.  And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.  And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring unto you tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.  For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.  And this shall be a sign unto you ; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.  And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men."
Luke 2:1-14, King James Version

Separating oneself from the familiarity of the words, it's a great literary image; the mightiest earthly power imaginable in Caesar Augustus, a man in Rome whose single decree is enough to command the lives of people in Judea over 4,000 miles away, and yet, right under the noses of one of the greatest empires in the history of the world, and in the unlikeliest of circumstances, a greater power of eternal significance is coming into being. Luke is believed to have been written by an educated Greek man sometime in the late first century or early second century, around 50-100 years after the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth, in order to appeal to a Gentile Greco-Roman audience, drawing from Greek dramatic traditions.  The shepherds spoke to an ancient Greek romanticism of the simplistic pastoral lifestyle and parallels the themes of the Christ (meaning "anointed one") as a shepherd for mankind, and their attendance at the manger casts his royalty in a different, more symbolic and spiritual light from the royal lineage and visitation of the Magi in the Gospel of Matthew.  Whether it happened like that or not, it is a story that speaks very much to some of humanity's most universal fears and hopes fitting to one of our most revered holidays of the year.  The cold threatens to remove us from the Earth entirely on these frigid winter nights, if it weren't for the human ingenuity and instinct that brings us to build houses with warm fires, to wear layers of clothes from all manner of fibers, and the communal spirit that brings us together to care for those in need and build each other up, in spite of what our still occasional shortcomings (hey, as long as the bad things are still rare enough to be newsworthy, we'll be okay).  At this coldest, darkest time of year, when the world is dying, when as fragile human beings we're staring into the abyss of our mortality, the Nativity story our story about eternal life for mankind.