The Christmas Story

Not everyone appreciates the significance of the Christmas story. Most people know the basic story of pregnant Mary and her husband Joseph making their journey to and through Bethlehem for the Roman census (a count of the number of citizens). Mary rode on a donkey, and for some reason, Mary and Joseph arrived a little later than every one else, and the pregnant couple was denied a room in inn after inn, home after home. Eventually, they settled on a manger, where Mary gave birth to baby Jesus. Then three wise men came to visit the Christ child bringing gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. The End.

But is that all there was to it? No. For one thing, one reason why the baby Jesus was so important was because his birth had, according to the Christian belief, been prophesied and people were expecting him as the Messiah, the one who would save the world. Secondly, Christian tradition tells that baby Jesus had been immaculately conceived by God, who had planted the seed in the womb of Mary. Mary had been informed of her impregnation by an angel of God, who had told her that she was with child and that the child was to be named Jesus, and that he would be the awaited Messiah.

While Jesus Christ was said to have been born on December 25th, it is said that the three wise men (or magi) did not come to visit until twelve days later, on the date of the Epiphany January 6. The Epiphany is celebrated in some countries (e.g. the Greek and Russian Orthodox churches) instead of December 25. The wise men were said to have traveled from the east.

The wise men, or magi, visited King Herod to confirm a rumor that Jesus had, in fact, been born. They wanted to know where they could find the child, and so Herod sent them to Bethlehem, and asked that they returned to him when they left the child's side. They followed the Star of Bethlehem in the east, and it led them right to the manger bed of the baby Jesus, where they presented him with the three gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

After leaving King Herod and before arriving at the stable, the three wise men were given a warning by an angel in a dream not to return to King Herod, warning them that King Herod had malicious intentions. The wise men delivered their gifts, and proclaimed Jesus the awaited Messiah. They therefore returned to their home via a different route than the one from whence they came. This apparently alerted Herod to the fact that Jesus was probably the prophesied Messiah, so Herod ordered the massacre of all infants in the area, with the intention of killing the proclaimed Messiah.

Christians everywhere celebrate Christmas as a reminder that the birth of Jesus was God's way of allowing them into a personal relationship with Him. In His life, Jesus would die a cruel death on a cross so that the world's sins would be forgiven and people everywhere could, through their faith in Jesus, have eternal life in Heaven.