Nativity Creativity
You won't believe how the baby Jesus was really born
It’s Christmas time! That means some of us are frolicking in modern myths about talking snowmen, jolly pajama clad sled drivers, and electric-nosed reindeer. Others are paying tribute to much older myth stories about the birth of a savior who through his own bodily sacrifice relieved us of our sinful natures and will shepherd us into internal life if only we ask.
I’m not really into any of that hokum. No faith practice and no kids to lie to.
But I do like spreading holiday cheer by bursting cultural bubbles and exploring how our brothers and sisters in other places practice the art of myth-making. For instance, did you know in the Italian tradition a witch known as La Befana serves as St. Nicolas, delivering toys and treats to good children and coal to errant bambinos. Meanwhile, in Norway, people hide their brooms on Christmas Eve because it is a night full of witches and one doesn’t want to give them access to transportation. Then there’s the more scary and suspect traditions like Krampus and Black Pete.
We know that cultures mold and meld new influences into old traditions. It’s a critical component of the tapestry of cross cultural exchange. One of my favorites is the tomato which has origins in central and south america. That means Italian cuisine didn’t involve the tomato until the 16th century – so your great great great great grandmother’s gravy was most definitely not your grandmother’s gravy. Similarly the potato is a “new world” vegetable, meaning the Irish didn’t know a spud from a spade until about the same time.
But I digress. Today, I want to explore a lost tradition from Christmas itself. More specifically, I want to share the general narrative from the Gospel of James, a 2nd century infancy gospel that did not make the cut when the New Testament was canonized at the council of Hippo in 393 CE.
Here’s the basic story:
Mary, the mother of the 8lbs, 6oz. Baby Jesus, was herself a bit of a miracle baby. Her parents, Joachim and Anna, were a wealthy couple who, sadly, were unable to conceive. So Joachim did what any sensible Jew in Roman-controlled Palestine would and goes into the wilderness to pray. Anna stays home and prays on her own. For some reason, God hears Anna's prayer (Poor Joachim – all that gumption and effort and suffering in the wilderness just to get ignored) and an angel tells her she will bear a child. Only seven months later (because Seven!) Anna gives birth to Mary and she dedicates the child to God which means that at the tender age of three, Mary is taken to the temple to be raised by the priests. Luckily, an angel makes sure she gets fed everyday. Priests aren’t known for their cooking. That’s what monks are good at.
So everything is groovy Tuesday and going according to God’s plan until Mary makes the awful mistake of being pre-pubescent and just before her 12th year, the priests realize she is likely to start menstruating soon. The priests can’t have that because her menstrual blood will make the Temple unclean – EEEGADS!!! Thankfully, God is still paying attention and intervenes on Mary’s behalf. He finds an old widower named Joseph to be her guardian. Joseph already has sons (hence Jesus’ brothers) and is old so has no sexual intentions towards Mary (Not sure that’s how it works in the real world, but we’ll leave that to a different discussion).
So Joseph and Mary shack up somewhere women are allowed to have bodies without a bunch of dudes freaking out about it and once again all is well. But then Joseph has to go away on a rather long business trip because a man’s work is never done. When he returns, he finds Mary is six months pregnant – EEEGADS!!!! She assures him she wasn’t up to any funny business and that an angel visited her and told her she would bear The Savior. Joseph buys this line and, while he doesn’t seem particularly troubled by the thought of raising a God Baby, he is very concerned with what the neighbors will say about the paternity. So he and Mary subject themselves to a chastity test (I’ll let you go discover the details). They pass the test, of course, and everyone’s reputations remain as intact as Mary’s immaculate hymen.
So then the apocryphal Roman census decree happens (this seems to be the first piece of narrative that fits the more traditional nativity story) so Mary and Joseph set out for Bethlehem. But Mary’s birth pangs hit before they can find an inn or even a manger so Joseph settles Mary into a cave to give birth (and once again we diverge from the traditional tale). Luckily, his sons are there to guard the cave while Joseph runs off to find a midwife. He returns with two midwives (because healthcare was apparently easier to get in ancient Palestine than in modern America), but before they can even enter the cave, a cloud overshadows it, an intense light fills it, and bingo-bango a baby is a-suckling at Mary's maternal breast.
Joseph and Midwife One are properly impressed by the miracle, but the second midwife, Salome, is a proper medical practitioner and wants to examine Mary to see how this happened. But as her curious, materialist, scientific-method hands reach for Mary’s nethers her hand withers as a punishment for her lack of faith (because god help us if we investigate faith claims!). Salome, however, is properly repentant and prays to God for forgiveness. Another angel appears (can you imagine a world where angels are just popping into existence to foretell events…terrifying!) and tells her to touch her claw hand to the Christ Child and she is instantly healed.
There’s some other stuff that happens after that, but it’s not particularly relevant to Christmas so we’ll just say The End.
Not exactly the birth narrative we’ve come to know from the synoptic gospels. But the one thing it does do is maintain Mary’s hymen – meaning she is a pure vessel for the delivery of Christ. Apparently, back in the good old days of scientific ignorance and theological speculation, some believed original sin was basically a venereal disease that was only introduced to humans when semen was introduced to a vagina. So this narrative clarifies how it was that Christ could be born a human without original sin attached to his plump little newborn body enabling a truly sinless being to be sacrificed for our very very sinful selves.
So perhaps this year when you’re putting your creche together you can add Salome and her withered hand or a gang of older brother body guards or even a cool cave like the cave on Hoth where Luke Skywalker kills the abominable snow wampa. Whatever traditions you and yours engage this time of year, don’t forget to be curious about them. Remember that knowledge doesn’t destroy mystery, it usually fertilizes the soil allowing more robust questions to flower. Also, let’s remember that patriarchy sucks and purity tests are dehumanizing.
Internet of the day
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
The Good:
My brother and his wife and his daughter came to visit last week (hence my missing post). We had a family dinner with aunts and uncles and cousins and the children of cousins (baby cousins?) and I was profoundly moved by time and its inevitability and how we have lost people and have brought new people into the world and our love and connection remains and family is the throughline of our lives and I know family is hard and difficult and painful and infuriating and at times soul crushing, but it’s also our foundation and I hope this holiday season you can find a moment to simply be grateful for the whackadoodles your bound to and offer them a little bit of grace despite their being themselves.
The Bad:
So in my last post I mentioned Trump’s use of the term “vermin” and his promise to be a dictator. Since, he has declared that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.” Folks! Folks! FOLKS!!! This is not a test of the emergency broadcast system. This is a fucking emergency. We simply cannot elect leaders who play around with fascistic blood and soil rhetoric like this. We know where it goes and where it goes is diametrically opposed to our nation’s core values of liberty, freedom, and equality under the law. I know I’m largely preaching to the choir here, but let’s remain vigilant and engaged and not pretend that just because some politicians demand contempt that they don’t also demand a back alley drubbing at the ballot box.
The Ugly:
The IDF dropped 6,000 bombs on Gaza in one week. The US dropped 7,423 bombs on Afghanistan in the entirety of 2019 (that’s 52 weeks) and 7,362 bombs in 2018. I don’t need to tell anyone that Afghanistan is bigger and less densely populated than Gaza. I’m very much a fence sitter on this conflict, as I find it extremely complicated and it can be very hard to parse facts from deeply believed fictions. But I think it’s pretty clear that you can’t kill your way to peace and the civilian population of Gaza is being brutally murdered. There is simply no moral high ground anymore.
Finally, marketing is for kids:
