Walter Russell Mead

The Christmas season ends on a high note, with the Feast of the Epiphany—also known as Three Kings’ Day, the day on which Christians traditionally commemorate the visit of the Three Wise Men to the infant Christ.

History turned a corner with the birth of Jesus Christ, and while the written reports of that event don’t tell me everything I want to know, they do tell me everything I need.

Whatever the risks of having it in, if we leave religion out of our national conversation, we end up with a vapid conversation that doesn’t address the deepest realities that move most of the people in this country.

To get any insight at all into what Jesus’ childhood and upbringing were like, you have to do something that sometimes makes Protestants uncomfortable: study Mary.

The flawed human race, trapped in a cycle of cascading pain and wrong is what, and who, God is bound and determined to love; the question is how can He do it?

The Christmas story suggests that we can somehow try to be loyal members of our nations, our families, our tribes—and also to reach out to the broader human community of which we are also a part.

That little baby lying so cutely in the manger is the biggest troublemaker in world history, and the shocking claims that Christianity makes about who He is and what He means irritate and antagonize people all over the world.

Most people experience moments that suggest life has meaning beyond the quotidian: painting a picture, talking with a friend, holding the hand of a small child, volunteering in a homeless shelter, watching the surf roll up the beach as the sun rises on the horizon. But some believe meaning is not a thing, but a person.

To understand what Christmas means, we need to know what Christians mean by God, His Son, and what on earth they think God’s Son was doing being born in the first place. We also need to ask why we believe our lives have meaning.

The slaughter of the innocents reminds us that God paid an obscene price for His determination to people the world with real people and autonomous moral actors rather than sock puppets. That is what we really celebrate at Christmas.