When you think of Christmas, what do you see in your mind’s eye? For many people it is the image of the three kings, crossing the desert on their camels, following an overwhelmingly bright star. For me, the image of Christmas is encapsulated in the words of the carol: We three kings of Orient are [...]
We have already looked in the second post of this series at some of the problems with interpreting the Nativity story. Now we have to face them head on. Matthew, Mark and Luke are what are called Synpotic Gospels: they have a lot of content in common, but also significant differences. Although there are many [...]
Why do we celebrate Christmas in December? It is actually a long and quite complicated story. Most people do not realise that the date that we celebrate Christmas Day now is not the same as it was in times of Christopher Columbus. Similarly, they do not realise that many of our Christmas traditions were imported [...]
Before we can hope to answer the question of what the Star of Bethlehem was, we must first find out when the events associated with it related by Matthew and Luke actually happen: when was Jesus born, or phrased differently, when was the first Christmas? This is actually one of the most difficult elements of [...]
There is one part of the western Christmas that is probably common to all of us, either directly or indirectly. Who has not participated in a Nativity play at school, or, at the very least, seen one as or with a proud parent? We all know the story: the journey in response to the census, [...]
