Jesus The Moocher, or the True Meaning of Xmas



The “true meaning of Christmas” is not a contained in a scene of a poor baby lying in a manger with animals talking and shepherds watching.  Nor did the sky erupt with angels and song when Jesus’ was born.

Jesus was real, and so was John the Baptist, but what they did and why is far harder to say. 

If there is any “real” meaning to Christmas, it is in Christ’s moral teachings.   Here are Dickens’ own words on Christmas:

“Remember! — It is Christianity To Do Good always — even to those who do evil to us. It is Christianity to love our neighbor as ourself, and to do to all men as we would have them Do to us. It is Christianity to be gentle, merciful, and forgiving, and to keep those qualities quiet in our own hearts …”

I’m with Dickens.  

As for the Christmas story itself, the Gospels don’t agree.  And the story that has been cobbled together makes no sense.  The idea that the Romans would ask folks to move back home from where they lived for the sake of completing a census is unwieldy and impractical – the Romans were engineers and soldiers, they would hardly ask the fractious Jews to uproot themselves for a census.   Nor did the skies open up with choirs of angels.  Had anything like this happened the Roman soldiers would have investigated and killed the baby Jesus immediately.

So neither the adoration by the Magi, nor the massacre of the innocents make any sense.  Neither Herod nor the Romans would have hesitated before slaying a rival, and a newborn king was exactly that.  Nor was there any need to kill more than the king himself.  Herod may have been ruthless, but he certainly didn’t need to wipe out the next generation of carpenters, farm laborers and fishermen. 

Last, we have Redemption. 

Redemption?  Really?  Sorry, Adam’s sin is a lame one, eating a fruit.  That the whole of mankind would have been stained by this trivial sin make the notion of an all powerful and all knowing god ridiculous.  A god of infinite mercy condemning everyone in the world for what was at best a little faux pas?    Nope,  not then, not now.

So when you hear of someone get in a snit because the local town square does not have a manger scene, that person is fretting about something else, not the true meaning of Christmas. 


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