Nativity and the Miracle of Childbirth

The poet John Keats once referred to the imagination as a "chamber of maiden thought" in which the conceptions of the mind spring to life, manifesting themselves in the same way that a rabbit miraculously jumps out of a magician's hat.

The miracle of dreams, thoughts and ideas, where they come from and how they "pop into" a person's head like a dream or a voice from nowhere, has puzzled people for thousands of years.  Likewise, to mothers as well as brain scientists, the notion that a baby may be conceived and born with a unique and independent personality of its own, a spirit and personality that arrives out of the blue, is a cause for anxiety and endless wonder.

Underlying this anxiety (will my child be a boy or a girl, a demon or an angel, a sad little runt or a powerful world-hero?) lies a secret: No one really knows where all of these children, their minds, personalities and spirits are coming from.   Explain it away as biology and chemistry if you want to, but any mother can tell you that you've missed the point if you think the birth of her child is simply a routine process of organic chemistry.

It's a miracle.

Nature has only one trick, but it's a good one.  Peakaboo!  People appear from nowhere (birth) and they disappear to nowhere (death) and nobody seems to have a very convincing explanation for why this is happening or how this is possible. 

Cynics delight in pointing out that the Christian tradition of celebrating the Nativity of Christ is nothing but a fairytale told to little children, much in the manner of a bedtime story full of make-believe characters (Jesus, Mary and Joseph, the shepherds, the three wisemen who follow a shining star, and, perhaps, as the playwright Christopher Durang has suggested, a camel named Misty.)

Mythologers affirm that many elements in the Nativity story are borrowed from the myths of Horus, Dionysus, Mithra and Krishna.  According to legend, Horus, Dionysus, Mithra and Krishna were sun-gods and world-saviors born on or near the winter soltice (December 21), born in a dark cave or stable surrounded by animals (the animal characters of the Zodiac) and visited by shepherds or wise men.  It's interesting to note that on December 24 the three stars in the belt of Orion (called "the three kings") align themselves with the star Sirius (the brightest star in the East) and point to the place on the horizon where the Sun will rise on December 25. These story elements originate with ancient astronomy, ancient star lore, and the worship of sun gods, not Christianity.

Historians, meanwhile, assure us that the commercialized forms of Christmas ritual we practice today have nothing to do with historical Christianity.  See, for example, the History Channel series of videos on the history of Christmas, which note that Christmas trees and Santa Claus were adopted from the Yuletide traditions of Scandinavia.  The Catholic Church has adopted these and many other pagan symbols during its 2,000 year history, with the result that the modern practice of Christmas has precious little to do with ancient Christian beliefs. The Dead Sea Scrolls constantly amaze people by refusing to mention smoothe jazz, reindeer or Santa Claus.  There is nary an eggnog or a Starbucks employee in a funny Christmas hat to be found among any of the ancient scrolls.

Economists agree the modern practice of pigging out on consumer goods one day of the year, December 25, has nothing to do with Christianity.  It's not about prophecy.  It's about profit.  Those who give more than they get at Christmas (charity) have mortally sinned against the Gospel of Greed, which commands us to make a profit and pray to Santa that we will get more than we give.

Evidently Christmas has become a perverse and tinsel-covered hash of the original nativity story found in the gospels of Matthew and Luke.  Many are understandably bitter about this fact.  This is a season when the worshippers of Mammon and Moloch mask their greed and the cold, cutthroat calculus of profit with a colorful but tissue-thin veneer of charity, and by doing so for only one day a year they seem to be giving themselves permission to behave with brutal indifference toward humanity the remaining 364.

As a lie told to little children and a hollow mockery of true Christian charity, the commercial version of Christmas sold at department stores deserves to be bashed. What the cynical Christmas-bashers miss, however, is the universal truth that got lost among all of this tinsel and wrapping paper: The miracle of childbirth.

Childbirth and the miraculous manifestation of new life in the world remain a mystery. The magic of a baby's grasp around one's finger and the breathtaking joy of gazing into the eyes of a newborn child remain every bit as powerful and amazing now in the year 2011 A.D. as they were 2,000 years ago.

Those who have grown old, cynical, tired or bitterly disappointed by the degraded form of commercialized Christmas practiced in our day, need to look back at the original fairytale of Christmas and ask themselves a simple question:  Were our ancestors really so stupid, when they invented this bedtime story for children?

As with many fairytales told by a clever writer, there is a second (hidden) meaning behind the innocent (literal) meaning. This hidden story speaks not only to the imagination of children, but also to the hearts of wise and world-weary adults. At the heart of the Christmas nativity story lies an ancient and archetypal symbol: A child held in its mother's arms.

Those who do not understand the love and hope behind this image have a great deal to learn.