What It was Really Like at the Birth of Baby Jesus

A New Look at What It was Really Like at the Birth of Christ

Christmas is of course a beautiful season for most of us, filled with twinkling lights around cities and homes, highways and hills. Perhaps especially here in the Shenandoah Valley where the hills and mountains come alive with gorgeous lights, colors, and sweet and even funny decorations everywhere. “Grinches” anyone?

I hope some of the rest of you saw Kevin Costner’s movie last week on TV which he named “The First Christmas” which was a two-hour special on ABC-TV. I’ve often enjoyed Costner’s movies or films but this was out of the ordinary. Frankly, I had no idea he considers himself a Christian, growing up in a home where they went to church, and even shares what Christmas meant to him in his family growing up. In the movie, Costner also has various religious professors and experts give us an inside look and some background about real life in the days of Christ’s birth. It was not the sweet “Away in the Manager” we sing regarding Jesus’ birth.

It gave me a new glimpse of life in the time of Herod in Judah—where life was raw and crude and deadly for so many. As Luke states early in the New Testament, “In the time of Herod, king of Judea” … we soon see a clearly deranged Herod in Costner’s film. This king was known to gruesomely kill members of his own family and things were not beautiful and serene in his palace.

A beautiful Bethlehem, we may think, should have been the home for a sweet peaceful life. But not with an aging, insane king who feared the collapse of his reign.

The visit of Gabriel to Mary’s simple and poor (likely) home shows both her surprise, her amazement, and finally her acceptance of her future. Newsweek (online) wrote of the production, “An historically accurate version of the nativity story” including a probably truer location of Joseph and Mary laboring in a cave when baby Jesus was born.

As a woman and mother after birthing our three daughters (several years apart of course!), I loved this fascinating look at how it likely was in the days of Mary, Elizabeth, Zechariah, and Joseph as they dealt with their new offspring. And life in Nazareth, and then the escape two years or so later with Herod fearing a baby so much he makes his men kill all the boy babies under a certain age. Oh my. How very sick and sad. The weeping and agony of the mothers and fathers hit our hearts in sorrowful ways.

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So. Like in many other homes, we have numerous “just so” nativity scenes all around our house which I love, but now realize how far from reality they certainly must be.

However, don’t put the nativities away: they carry stories for all of us, don’t they? The little darling nativity my 13ish daughter gave me after eyeing it in a giftshop at her camp, and giving it to me because she didn’t have enough money to also buy one of her own; another tiny nativity reminds me of the year I bought those sweet little boxes with little manger scenes to give to my Sunday school children one year; (I wonder how many of those are kept!).

And finally one more to share (I could do more), the tiny nativity pieces my mother bought in Spain which she treasured for 20-30 years, and which I now have owned for another 20ish years. So precious, and dear! I think Mother Mary and Father Joseph don’t mind the glittery versions we have on our windowsills, hutch, piano, and bookshelves.

We have enough bad Herod-like stuff in our world today on the evening news and elsewhere. Let’s celebrate what we can and live the Christ-centered life God wants us to remember and share with others.

Celebrating Christmas with you!