Behind Day 19 of my Advent Calendar is:
A PARTY POPPER
So the reason for my choosing a party popper as the item behind today’s ‘door’ is not, as you might imagine, because it is something that gives an air of the celebrations that are so appropriate at this time of the year, but rather because it’s the closest I could get to a picture of a party pooper!
Because, whilst I assure you that that is not what I intend to be today, it is, I fear, what some might consider me.
But this is not because I’m going to come over all Grinch like and,
‘with all of my grinch fingers nervously drumming,
look for some way to stop Christmas from coming!’
Not at all. But having said a little yesterday about some of what often gets left out of those hugely enjoyable nativity plays that make up such a large part of our Christmas celebrations, today I thought I’d say something about the things that are included but might not be strictly correct. Please do feel free to ‘boo’ and ‘hiss’ me as you see fit – it is pantomime season after all! [Oh yes it is!]
Take then the idea that Jesus was born in a stable – this is something which is not actually mentioned in the biblical account. We know that Mary and Joseph were unable to find suitable accommodation in Bethlehem, but we don’t know, with any degree of certainty at least, why that was. It may have been due to it being a particular busy time for those offering hospitality in Bethlehem, what with the census that was taking place requiring everyone to return to the town of their birth, or perhaps it was the result of the scandal that would have surrounded Mary at the time, with folk being unwilling to offer accommodation to a pregnant woman who was unmarried and whose child was not fathered by the man with whom she was travelling.
The idea that Mary gave birth somewhere that was surrounded by animals comes only from the fact that Jesus had no crib to lay his head and so had to make do with a manger instead. [Luke 2:7]. That Jesus was born in a stable is therefore, an assumption, perhaps not an unreasonable assumption, but an assumption it is all the same.
But it is when the three wise men join the shepherds in that stable that we begin to deviate more sharply from what we know took place from scripture.
Firstly, we don’t know how many wise men there were. The idea that there were three comes only from the fact that they brought three gifts. Who knows, perhaps there was a fourth wise man and two of them went halves on the cost of the frankincense – after all, as anyone who has recently looked into the cost of Chanel No. 5 will know, perfume ain’t cheap!
Secondly the Bible doesn’t actually say that the wise men followed a star all the way from wherever it was that they began their journey. What it does say is that they saw a ‘star in the East’ and, as a result, came to worship the one to whom that star belonged. [Matthew 2:2]
‘But if they didn’t follow a star’, I hear you ask, ‘how did the wise men know where to go?’
In the Bible the wise men are more properly called Magi, the name from which we get the word magicians. The Magi hailed from the East where they had come to hold great political power.
This was back in the days of King Nebuchadnezzar – the same King Nebuchadnezzar who had taken the Israelites into Babylonian captivity back in Old Testament times. It was the job of the Magi to not only recognise and crown kings, but also, when called upon to do so, to offer advice on certain matters which, on occasions at least, seemed to include the interpretation of dreams.
Now one of the Israelites who had been taken into captivity by Nebuchadnezzar was a man called Daniel and, partly due to his God given ability to interpret the dreams that King Nebuchadnezzar had that the Magi could not, this Daniel eventually rose to became chief of the magicians. [Daniel 5:11].
And so it is entirely possible that the wise men of Matthew Chapter 1 knew where to travel to because they would have been well versed in the prophecies regarding the birth of a king that had been handed down from the time of Daniel. Which in effect is what it says in Matthew 2:5-6. For there we read that, when King Herod asks the wise men where the Christ was to be born. they answer him with these words:
‘In Bethlehem of Judea, for so it is written by the prophet: “And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah, for from you shall come a ruler, who will shepherd my people Israel.”’
This then would explain why, seemingly at a time when they were not being guided by a star, the wise men went first to King Herod in Jerusalem – for surely they would have expected a king to have taken up residency there.
And it would explain too why the wise men went about asking everyone they met where they would find the one who had been born King of the Jews [Matthew 2:2] – for surely they would have expected everyone to have been so excited by the event that they would have kept abreast of exactly where he was residing.
But sadly, what the wise men had expected was not actually the case, for, as John reminds us at the beginning of his gospel, Jesus ‘came to his own but his own people did not receive him’ [John 1:11].
And so it is no surprise that the wise men were overjoyed when the ‘star’ seemingly reappeared and was able to lead the wise men the final few miles to the HOUSE where Jesus, now a CHILD, was living. [Matthew 2:11]. Which suggests that all this took place some time after the birth of Jesus. Unlike in the nativity plays, therefore, the shepherds and kings would never have met.
But all this rather begs the question about how a star can a) reappear and b) accurately pinpoint a specific location whilst way up in the sky.
Well to answer that one we need to ask ourselves what exactly the star was. Because whilst some have suggested that it was a planetary conjunction and others that it was a supernova or comet, there are still others who have suggested something rather different. The word translated ‘star’ is ‘aster’ which can mean ‘a shining or blazing forth’ and so, what the wise men saw in the East may have been, not so much a star, but a supernatural blazing forth of the glory of God, something not dissimilar, perhaps, to that experienced by the shepherds that we read of in Luke 2:9.
‘And an angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord shone around them.’
Well there have been a lot of ‘what if’s and ‘maybe’s today, so let’s finish with something definite.
Firstly the wise men came to worship the one who was born to be King of the Jews. And by bowing down to worship Jesus, these Gentile kingmakers acknowledged him to be, not just the King of the Jews, but the King of non-Jews too. As such Jesus is declared by them to be the King of the whole earth.
And secondly, regardless of the exact nature of the star, what is absolutely certain is who that star belongs to. For it was, without doubt, Jesus’ star [Matthew 2:2]. If it was a star in the conventional sense of the word, then it was Jesus’s star, because all creation belongs to him. And if it was a star in the sense of a manifestation of the glory of God, then it still belongs to Jesus, because, since Jesus is God, God’s glory is Christ’s glory too.
But whilst our much loved nativity plays don’t, perhaps, get everything quite, maybe it doesn’t matter all that much, provided, of course, that we grasp the most important parts of the story – that at Christmas God became a baby boy and, as every self respecting Nativity angel will tell you, he was given the name Jesus because he would save his people from their sins.
Which, you’ve got to admit is, is something still well worth partying over.
*****
Today’s song is ‘Yellow’ by Coldplay. I’ll leave you to look at the lyrics and judge just how appropriate a choice it is but, trust me on this one, it’s a whole lot more appropriate than the one sung for Day 17 by a tuxedo wearing monster! I promise that normal service will resume tomorrow!
Previously from ‘A Christmas Countdown’:
To read ‘A Christmas Countdown – Part 18’, click here
To read ‘A Christmas Countdown – Part 17’, click here
To read ‘A Christmas Countdown – Part 16’, click here
To read ‘A Christmas Countdown – Part 15’, click here
To read ‘A Christmas Countdown – Part 14’, click here
To read ‘A Christmas Countdown – Part 13’, click here
To read ‘A Christmas Countdown – Part 12’, click here
To read ‘A Christmas Countdown – Part 11’, click here
To read ‘A Christmas Countdown – Part 10’, click here
To read ‘A Christmas Countdown – Part 9’, click here
To read ‘A Christmas Countdown – Part 8’, click here
To read ‘A Christmas Countdown – Part 7’, click here
To read ‘A Christmas Countdown – Day 6’, click here
To read ‘A Christmas Countdown – Day 5’, click here
To read ‘A Christmas Countdown – Day 4’, click here
To read ‘A Christmas Countdown – Day 3’, click here
To read ‘A Christmas Countdown – Day 2’, click here
To read ‘A Christmas Countdown – Day 1’, click here
To read ‘An Advent Calendar – Complete’, click here
Related posts:
To read ‘How the Grinch and Covid stole General Practices Christmas’, click here
To read ‘Twas the NHS week before Christmas – 2022’, click here
To read ‘How the Grinch stole from county cricket…or at least tried to’. click here
To read ‘How Covid-19 stole the the cricket season’, click here
Some musings 