Christmas Myths: Three Things You Think You Know About The Holiday That Aren’t Actually True [Opinion]

Quick, rattle off everything you know about Christmas! Great! Now, unfortunately, I’m going to explain to you how most of what you think you know about Christmas isn’t really true. Here are three myths you believe about Christmas that are actually completely bogus.

Myth #1: We Celebrate Christmas On December 25 Because That’s When Jesus Christ Was Born

There are a lot of reasons we celebrate Christmas on December 25, and explaining those reasons would require several paragraphs touching on early Christian history, the Roman Empire, Biblical prophecy, reconciling a lunar calendar and a solar one, and a whole host of other issues that would bore you unless you’re a historian or Bible scholar.

But rather than focus on how and why Christendom got the wrong date for Christmas, let’s instead focus on how we know it’s wrong. You may remember, from your Sunday School days, this verse from Luke’s gospel.

“And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. Luke 2:8 New International Version”

The area around Bethlehem experiences something akin to winter, and in December, it would have probably been cold and rainy (if by “cold” you mean “middle 40s”), as religion scholar Mark Goodacre explained to Time. That means the shepherds wouldn’t have been out in the fields, but rather in caves, pens, and other ersatz shelters. So in other words, if take Luke’s gospel as, uh, gospel, then Jesus wouldn’t have been born in the winter.

So when was Jesus born? No one knows; the Bible is short on details about this sort of thing, probably because the date of Jesus’ birth isn’t all that important to the bigger picture.

Myth #2: Jesus Was Born In A Manger/Stable/Barn

First, Jesus wasn’t born in a manger – a manger is a feeding trough, and unless someone in Bethlehem that night happened to have a manger big enough to hold an adult woman (“adult woman” here meaning “any woman/teen girl of childbearing age”), Jesus wasn’t born in one, nor was he born in a stable/barn.

Again, we go back to the Bible.

“And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn. Luke 2:7 King James Version“

You’ll notice that for this heading, I used a different translation of the Bible – the King James Version. There’s a reason for that: Christian iconography depicting Jesus as having been born in a barn due to lack of room at the inn comes from a mistranslation of the word translated as “inn.” Modern translations – for example, the New International Version — more accurately say that there was no room for them “in the guest room.”

In other words, as Michael Voll explained in Cracked, Joseph and Mary were likely trying to crash at someone’s house, but since there was no room for them in the (upstairs) guest room, they wound up downstairs in the kitchen, where there would have been a stove for warmth. They would have been joined by an animal or two (not a whole menagerie like you child’s school’s Christmas pageant depicts), who would have also been brought in for warmth and shelter. The conditions wouldn’t have been ideal for giving birth, of course, but being warm and indoors when you give birth beats being cold and in a barn.

Myth #3: There Were Three Wise Men/Magi/Kings Present At Jesus’ Birth

The appearance of the Three Wise Men, as they’ve traditionally been called (or “Three Kings,” as the song states) is documented, such as it is, in Matthew’s gospel.

“After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi [wise men] from the east came to Jerusalem. Matthew 2:1 New International Version“

The word translated as “Magi/wise men” comes from the Greek word “magos,” and it means… well, no one’s really sure. Traditional Biblical scholarship has concluded that it means something akin to “astrologers,” which makes sense, considering they later tell Herod that they had “seen [Jesus’] star.”

Being astrologers, they undoubtedly noticed something amiss in the sky (which they dutifully studied night in and night out), somehow figured it heralded a new king being born, gathered gifts, and undertook the journey to Jerusalem to consult with King Herod, and then on to Bethlehem to pay their respects to Jesus. That journey probably took weeks if not months; and indeed, Matthew’s gospel hints that it could have been as much as two years after Jesus’ birth that the “Magi” showed up.

So they weren’t kings, they weren’t present at Jesus’ birth, and there weren’t necessarily three of them. Christendom has concluded that there were three because they bring three gifts (gold, frankincense, and myrrh). But Matthew doesn’t specify how many there were; “magi” is plural, meaning there were at least two, but there could have been any number of them.

The Takeaway

History doesn’t always provide us with a clean narrative that can easily be rendered in art and storytelling and taught to small children. Sometimes you have to take shortcuts, over-simplify complicated concepts, and fill in the gaps of your knowledge with guesswork. And the Christmas narrative is no different.

And while the flaws in the narrative may have led us to, collectively, believe some things that aren’t true, don’t let the tiny details distract you from the larger point. Christmas isn’t about properly dotting your i’s and crossing all of your t’s.

So mark your calendars for December 25, put our your barn-shaped nativity scene, and plug in those ancient plastic sculptures depicting the Three Wise Men. I won’t hold it against you.

[Featured Image by Cara-Foto/Shutterstock]