How many of these Christmas myths did you assume were from the Bible?

By David McElroy · December 24, 2011

Everybody knows what the nativity scene looks like. There were shepherds and their sheep on the left, bundled up on the cold winter night. On the right were three sharply dressed men — the three kings — who had come to worship Jesus. With Mary and Joseph in the middle is a strangely silent and wise-looking baby — who appears to have a 25-watt bulb inside his head to give Him an unearthly glow.

This is shared cultural mythology about Christmas. We’ve picked it up from movies, nativity scenes and Hallmark cards, but it’s not in the Bible. We fall prey to Christmas myths just as easily as we fall prey to political and economic ones. How many of these myths have you fallen for over the years?

Jesus was born on Dec. 25. Well, no. We don’t know the date. They didn’t have calendars hanging on walls back then and there’s no reason to believe they celebrated (or even noticed) birthdays. From the fact that shepherds were in the fields, according to the Bible, we know it wasn’t in December. I’ve read speculation ranging from spring all the way through September.

So why do we celebrate Jesus’ birth on Dec. 25? Simply because that’s when the Catholic church arbitrarily decided to celebrate it. There was a traditional non-religious holiday on that date anyway, which fell just after the winter solstice around Dec. 21. Since people were accustomed to a winter celebration then, the church gave them Christmas to take its place. That tradition continued to be followed by Protestant churches even after they broke away from Rome. There’s certainly nothing wrong with the date, but it has no biblical significance. You may even use this factoid to absolve yourself when you send people their gifts a few days (or even months) late.

There were three kings who came to worship Jesus at His birth. We’re told that wise men from the East came to find Jesus, but we don’t know how many there were. They also weren’t kings. Instead, it’s considered most likely that they were astrologers instead. Finally, they weren’t there at the birth. Jesus might have been several years old by the time they showed up and visited the family — in a house, according to the book of Matthew. It does seem sort of a shame, though. I suspect the incense they brought would have been a much more pleasant smell than that which emanated from Jesus’ trough-mates.

Joseph tried to get a room at an inn, but there were no rooms available. As far as I can tell, they didn’t even have anything like the Holiday Inn back then. Although an innkeeper plays a prominent role in some of our Christmas pageants, none is mentioned in the Bible. Instead, it’s more likely that Jesus was born in the home of one of Joseph’s relatives. Afterwards, He was placed into a manger — which could have been in a cave or something else — because all the rooms of the house were already filled. It was a humble bed, to be certain, but at least a little more respectable than those goofy bounce-n-play chairs we stick kids in nowadays. He was the Son of God, for heaven’s sake. Can you imagine Jesus in one of those things from Babies-R-Us?

As reported in the song, “Away in the Manger,” we know that Jesus didn’t cry. It’s a beautiful Christmas song, but the part of the second verse that says, “The little Lord Jesus, no crying He makes,” is pure fabrication and bad theology. An important point of Christian theology is that Jesus was fully human — as well as fully God — and there’s no reason to think He was anything except a normal, crying baby. Perhaps the hymn-writer on the scene at the time just couldn’t make out Jesus’ cries because “the cattle were lowing” a bit too loudly.

When people say Xmas, they’re being disrespectful by taking Christ out of Christmas. Actually, X has a long history — in the church — as a symbol for Jesus. The first two letters of the word Christ are the Greek letters chi (X) and rho (P). These Greek letters, superimposed upon each other, have been used by the church for years as Jesus’ monogram. It’s used in Xmas, as well as in Xian, Xmas and Xianity. So this isn’t a plot by atheists or secular humanists (or whoever) to “X Christ out of Christmas.” We manage to take Christ out of Christmas in plenty of other ways, though. Maybe we ought to get hung up on those issues instead.

So there are a few of the common myths. If you’d like to read the original text to see how it differs from the myths you have about Christmas, take a look at the second chapter of the book of Luke, for example. If you haven’t read the story lately, you’ll find that it’s not much like the cartoon characterization that popular culture has turned it into.

What else do you assume about the Gospel story that also turns out not to be true? I’ll bet it’s more than you think.

Note: Instead of trying to document each point, I’ll just give you links for further reading if you’d like to pursue sources. There’s a lot of good material out there about myths surrounding these issues, but I’d suggest trying here, here and here first, although not every source is going to agree on every point.

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Is it an attempt to blur the gender line between men and women? Or is it some weird tribute to the traditional Scottish kilt? It’s hard to say, but fashion designers keep pushing for men to wear skirts in the last few years. Both men and women in modern fashion seem oddly androgynous, as though it would be offensive for a man to look manly or for a woman to look feminine. A CNN article about the latest fashions from Paris caught my attention Monday and left me wondering about the ugly clothes the designers are hawking. If a man wants to wear a skirt — or a kilt — that’s OK with me, but I’ll stick with a traditional dark suit with a white shirt and tie. (Well, when I’m not wearing t-shirts and sweats, of course.) I always wonder who actually buys the outlandish garb from fashion designers anyway. I would be humiliated to be seen in any of this stuff, but I obviously have no sense of high fashion.

If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

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