Questions And Answers About Christmas
Q. Do we know the exact year in which Jesus was born?
A. No, we do not. In the sixth century, a monk named Dionysius Exiguus drew up a calendar that fixed the birth of Christ in the Roman year 753, but scholars today agree that Dionysius miscalculated by a few years. So it is probable that Jesus was born four or five years before the usually accepted year one of the Christian era.
Q. Why was the Incarnation necessary? Why did Jesus become man?
A. The Incarnation was necessary because Adam and Eve had committed an infinite offense against God. No mere human being could make up for that offense. The people of the Old Testament tried to do so through sacrifices of animals and crops, but they were unsuccessful. It was only when God, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, took on a human nature that atonement for the sin of Adam was possible. As God, Jesus could offer infinite reparation to His Father for the offense; as man, He could take the place of sinful humanity and save us from our sins.
Q. Why was Jesus born in Bethlehem instead of in Nazareth, where Mary and Joseph lived?
A. Jesus should have been born in Nazareth, but the Roman Emperor Caesar Augustus had ordered a census of the region of the world that was under his domination. The census required that each person should register in the town where his family originated, so Joseph and Mary had to travel to Bethlehem, a journey of about 90 miles. One of the reasons why some of the Jewish leaders later rejected Jesus as the Messiah was because they knew the Messiah was to come from Bethlehem (cf. Micah 5:1).
Since Jesus had lived most of His life in Nazareth (the sign at the top of the cross said, “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews”), the leaders thought that’s where He was born. They did not know His birth had taken place in Bethlehem.
Q. What was the manner of Jesus’ birth?
A. The best analogy that we have heard is that the birth of our Lord was like a ray of sunshine passing through a window without disturbing the pane of glass. Since labor pains are associated with the consequences of original sin (cf. Gen. 3:16), and Mary did not have original sin (her Immaculate Conception), she did not suffer labor pains during the birth of Jesus. Referring to our Lady’s title “Star of the Sea,” St. Bernard wrote:
“There is indeed a wonderful appropriateness in this comparison of her to a star because as a star sends out its ray without detriment to itself, so did the Virgin Mary bring forth her Child without injury to her integrity. And as the ray emitted does not diminish the brightness of the star, so neither did the Child born of her tarnish the beauty of Mary’s virginity.”
Q. Who were the first persons to see Jesus after His birth?
A. Shepherds who were watching their sheep in the fields near Bethlehem. They were alerted to the “good news of great joy” by angels. Shepherds at the time were at the bottom rung of society, so it would have seemed inconceivable to the upper classes that the first announcement of the Messiah would be made to this lowly group.
But Jesus often did the unexpected. He later would refer to Himself as the Good Shepherd who seeks first the lost sheep of Israel, who leaves the 99 sheep and searches for the one who was lost, who acts as a shepherd at the Last Judgment in separating the sheep from the goats, and who identifies Himself as the gate through which the sheep, i.e., those seeking salvation, must pass.
Q. What do we know about the star that led the Magi to Bethlehem?
A. While scientists have speculated about astronomical evidence of a confluence of planets at the time of Jesus’ birth that could have produced a star bright enough to guide the Magi hundreds of miles, the unusual movement of the star suggests the miraculous intervention of God. “This star,” said St. John Chrysostom in one of his homilies on the Gospel of Matthew, “was not of the common sort, or rather not a star at all, it seems to me, but some invisible power transformed into this appearance” (cf. Scott Hahn’s book Joy to the World, p. 115). This fourth-century saint believed that the star that led the Magi from Persia to Jerusalem to Bethlehem, and then disappeared, was really an angel of light.
Q. Can we be sure that the Magi consisted of three men?
A. Actually, the Bible doesn’t say that there were three Wise Men, only that they brought three gifts to the Christ Child — gold, frankincense, and myrrh — so the presumption is that there were three of them. Tradition gives them the names Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar. Although they are often identified as kings, they were probably astrologers who studied the heavens for signs and observed a celestial event that caused them to travel a long distance, perhaps from Persia. They are often included in the manger scene, but Scripture says (cf. Matt. 2:11) that they actually visited the Baby Jesus in a house sometime after His birth. King Herod had asked them to report the location of the Child to him, but learning in a dream that he meant to harm the Child, the Magi returned home by another route.
Q. What is the symbolism of the three gifts presented to Jesus?
A. The gold symbolized the kingship of Jesus, frankincense His divinity, and myrrh, which is a burial ointment, His Passion and death. Even at the birth of Christ there was the shadow of the cross.
Q. How many male children under the age of two were murdered by King Herod in an effort to kill the newborn King of the Jews?
A. We don’t know the exact number. In his Life of Christ, Giuseppe Ricciotti said that “a likely bit of information tells us that Bethlehem and its territories numbered slightly more than one thousand inhabitants, and we may conclude from this that there were about thirty babies born there every year. In two years there would be sixty, but since the sexes are about equally represented and Herod had no reason to destroy the girl babies, only one-half of the newly born would have fallen victim to his cruelty, namely, the thirty male children.”
He added, however, that “even this number is too large . . . because infant mortality in the Orient is very high and a goodly number of babies never reach the age of two. Hence we may set our figure between twenty and twenty-five” (pp. 96-97).
Q. The chronology of the events after the birth of Jesus seems confusing. Can you clarify what happened and when?
A. The most likely chronology is that Mary and Joseph took Jesus to Jerusalem forty days after His birth to present Him to the Lord in the Temple, where He was greeted by pious Jews named Simeon and Anna. They then returned to Bethlehem and found lodging in a house since, presumably, the town was not as crowded as it had been when they first arrived there. It was in the house that the Magi presented their gifts to Christ.
Matthew doesn’t say how long after the Wise Men left that Joseph was warned in a dream that he should flee to Egypt with Jesus and Mary because Herod was seeking to kill the Christ Child. He says only that “Joseph rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed for Egypt” (Matt. 2:14).
Nor do we know how long they stayed in Egypt, after a journey from Palestine that must have taken more than a week. Msgr. Ricciotti estimated that they were in Egypt for several months when word came that Herod had died, and the Holy Family was able to go back to Nazareth (p. 99).
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