Christmas

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.

And 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.

Theotokos can be translated into English several ways: the most common is “Mother of God,” and a very large majority of Christians around the world considers Mary to be, literally, the Mother of God.

From a Christian perspective, God’s act of creation is an expression of love. God made the world because He wants an abundance of beings and sensibilities to love, to be with, to share life with, and to make happy.

It is a terrible scandal, but there is no way to separate the Trinity from Christmas. God is One; God is Three; the baby Jesus is the Second Person of the Trinity, come to earth to save sinners and open the door to a new kind of relationship between human beings and God

Love doesn’t just exist, Christians believe. It rules. That baby in the manger isn’t just the center of a circle of affection that includes his family and the adoring shepherds; He is the King and Lord of the universe.

We need to know what Christians mean by God, why they think God had a Son, and what they think God’s Son was doing being born at all, much less being born in Bethlehem.

Church calendars mark December 28 as Holy Innocents’ Day, the day we remember the deaths of the babies in Bethlehem who were murdered at Herod’s command.

Conventional manger scenes don’t show it, but besides the ox, the ass, the sheep, and the camels, there was another animal in the room at Christmas: an elephant. And the elephant in the room was the idea that Jesus’ mother was a virgin when He was born.