In late December each year we repeat the Christmas story; we celebrate the birth of the Son of God. Almost without realizing it, we have interwoven two completely different accounts in the gospels into a single narrative. Jesus is born in a stable, wrapped in swaddling clothes, and laid in a manager. Shepherds in the field are visited by angels and in turn leave their sheep in the fields to visit the new born Prince of Peace. This is Luke’s account. The quiet of his starry night gives us a moment of peace and pause of our own. Matthew, on the other hand, tells nothing of these events, but does tell about the star seen by the Magi and their visit to the young child. They bring gifts fit for a king. Their adoration reminds us of the universal feelings which all babies create in us.
Both gospel writers apparently give us a warm and wonderful story, a story of calm in the midst of the world’s turmoil. There is hope and promise. The Nativity of Bethlehem repeated each December has become like the peace and warmth of our own sanctuary, with these pleasant stained glass windows. Like so much popular Christian art and music from the last century until now, the Biblical narrative itself has become a portrait of sweetness, comfort, repose.
I must insist, however, that we have stopped reading Luke and Matthew too soon. Their narratives are not idyllic pleasantries designed as a framework for cheerful festivities in an otherwise gray, cold and damp season of the year. Read on. After eight days Jesus is taken by his parents in the temple to Jerusalem. The old prophet Simon sees him and rejoices. Yet he tells Mary, “And a sword will pierce through your own soul” (Luke 2:35). Ominous words from Luke. In Matthew, the visit of the wise men is followed by terror. The family flees to Egypt, while in Bethlehem King Herod’s command to murder all male children under two years of age is executed. The joy of childbirth vanishes, to be replaced by death, tears, grief.
The massacre of the infants, the slaughter of the Holy Innocents – this conclusion to the Nativity is not often included, much less emphasized, in our seasonal repetition of the birth of Jesus. I wonder how often any of us have heard a sermon on the subject at all. This reveals something about our faith and our perception of the world. Rather than faith which comes to grips with the brutalities of the world, ours tends to be a religion of comfort shielding us from such harsh realities.
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Chris Petrak, Cathedral Publishers, 1976