The Unholy Family of Christmas (Part 1)

Artists depict the holy family of Christmas on everything from cards to pieces hung in galleries. One pose that has may variations shows Joseph standing with a staff and looking over Mary’s shoulder. Both of them are focused on their newborn lying in a manger. The scene is iconic and conveys a holy hush.

Mothers and fathers everywhere are photographed similarly holding their newborn in adoration and quiet amazement at this new life now in their lives. Though these poses also hold a sense of the sacred, only Joseph, Mary, and Jesus are called “the holy family.”

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Unwrapping Christmas in a Different Paradigm: Christ Born in Us (5 of 5)

Jesus was born in Bethlehem, within time, in a particular place; by contrast, Christ was and is from the beginning. As John says, “In the beginning was the Logos.” To say, “Christ was born in Bethlehem,” is a theological affirmation, not a historical statement. The Christmas songs we sing are filled with theology linking Christ with Jesus. Such connections can be exciting, soul-nourishing, and transformative. My point here is that using Jesus and Christ interchangeably, without awareness of how they have separate lineages and definitions, fuzzes over important distinctions between them. With the loss of those distinctions, the Christ of the cosmos gets reduced to proportions of history—a serious mistake, and never more so than when we are up against the stories of empire and consumer economics.

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