The Christmas Story

It is not a hyperbole to describe the Christmas story as fantastic. That is to say, it has all the characteristics of a fantasy. C. S. Lewis observed, ""The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact." 

John Koessler's latest book, On Things Above: The Earthly Importance of Heavenly Reality, is now available. You can get it from Amazon. 

Dr. John Koessler is an award-winning writer and retired faculty emeritus of Moody Bible Institute. John writes the Practical Theology column for Today in the Word and a monthly column on prayer for Mature Living. He is the author of 16 books. His latest book , When God is Silent, is published by Lexham Press. You can learn more about John at https://www.johnkoessler.com.

Transcript

A few years ago, my wife Jane and I visited a church on Christmas Eve. It was one of those shopping mall churches–literally. The church building was a converted shopping center. Not only that, but the building in which the congregation worshipped had formerly been a store that specialized in Christmas decorations. 

During the service, the pastor invited the children to come on stage and listen as he read a story. But it was not the story I expected. It was a picture book about a mouse. The story had a Christmas theme, of course. But I couldn't help wondering why he thought it was a better choice than the Bible's own account of the birth of Christ. Did he think that the biblical narrative wasn't compelling enough to hold a child's attention? 

We often speak of the Bible's account of the Nativity of Christ as the Christmas story, and we are right to do so. "Story is the primary verbal means of bringing God's word to us," Eugene Peterson has observed.[1] The narrative of Jesus' birth recorded in the Gospels is no exception. It has all the elements one would expect of a great story. And one of the marks of a truly great story is that it grows more compelling each time we hear it. 

Familiarity is the very thing that anchors such stories so firmly in our imagination. Why else do we return again and again to novels, plays, and movies that we have seen before? It is certainly not because we think the story will change with the retelling. We love these old tales precisely because we know them. They are like the familiar contours of a much-loved landscape. To go back to them is like coming home. 

In his book The Art of Biblical Narrative, Robert Alter notes how "in biblical narrative more or less the same story often seems to be told two or three or more times about different characters, or sometimes even about the same character in different sets of circumstances."[2] This is exactly how Luke's account of the Christmas story begins. Not with Jesus, but with the priest Zechariah, who is startled by an angel that appears to him in the holy place to tell him that his prayer has been heard. At long last, his wife Elizabeth, will bear him a child after years of hopeless waiting. This is a child of promise who "will be great in the sight of the Lord" (Luke 1:15). 

We have heard this story before. Not once, but several times. Then it was Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachel, Elkanah and Hannah, and Manoah and his unnamed wife. So we know what comes next. Or, at least, we think we do. God makes a promise. Those who receive it have questions that are finally answered by a miraculous birth. 

Only it turns out that, in this case, the familiar events, which unfold just as we expect them to, are not the main event. They are merely an antechamber to the real story, which is also about a miraculous birth but one with a truly unexpected twist. Mary isn't an old woman whose womb has been closed by the will of God. She is a young woman whose womb is opened when the Holy Spirit overshadows her and enables her to conceive as a virgin. The child she bears will be great, like the son of Zechariah and Elizabeth. But he will be even greater, because he "will be called the Son of the Most High,"  to whom the Lord will give the "throne of his father David" and a kingdom that will never end (Luke 1:32–33). Just as a bolt of lightning may cast a different light on a familiar room and reveal unexpected shapes, the old story suddenly becomes new. It turns out that the "seed" of the woman who was promised so long ago in the Garden of Eden and who will crush Satan's head is also the Son of God. 

It is not a hyperbole to describe the Christmas story as fantastic. That is to say, it has all the characteristics of a fantasy. Except it is not fantasy. C. S. Lewis used the term "myth" to speak of the Christmas story. Today (and indeed in Lewis's day as well), myth is a synonym for what is fiction. To call something a myth these days is to label it a mere story. But Lewis uses the term in the opposite direction to speak of facts that are more like a story and a story that is more than a tale. "In the enjoyment of a great myth we come nearest to experiencing as a concrete what can otherwise be understood only as an abstraction," Lewis explains. "The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact."[3] 

Most Christians, at least those who believe in the Nativity as something that actually took place, would be more comfortable calling these events history. But this label, while true enough, is not entirely adequate to describe what happened. The story of Christ's birth is indeed history, but it is not bare history. I am tempted to describe it as history that is theologically charged. I am not speaking of history that has been recast in the telling to reflect the already accepted doctrinal views of a particular segment of the church (though I admit that this has sometimes been done). But that these are true events by which God has revealed not only His plan but Himself. 

"A fairytale is not an allegory," the 19th-century fantasy writer George MacDonald observed. "There may be allegory in it, but it is not an allegory."[4] Something similar can be said of the Christmas story. The events described in the Bible's account of Christ's birth may have elements that are fantastic, but they are not fantasy. Their may even be some allegory in the Bible's historical accounts (cf. Gal. 4:24–26). But they are not strictly allegories. 

Likewise, the Christmas story is historical but not strict history in the modern sense. To the modern mind, history is a detailed account of events as they happened. It is objective. It lays bare the facts for all to see. Anyone who has read a modern history knows that this strict definition is itself a fiction. Writers of history are rarely neutral. They are not merely recounting events. They are espousing a view. The Gospel writers are no different. They are not neutral. Nor do they recite facts dispassionately. Their story is told with an agenda. George MacDonald's observation about the "meaning" of a fairytale is just as applicable to the theological histories we know as the Gospels: "It is there not so much to convey a meaning as to wake a meaning."[5] 

Perhaps this is why the Gospel writers exclude so much from their accounts that we moderns would prefer them to have included. If the writing is spare, it is by God's design to leave room for the imagination to be awakened. “The best way with music, I imagine, is not to bring the forces of our intellect to bear upon it,” George MacDonald recommended, “but to be still and let it work on that part of us for whose sake it exists.” 

Let us likewise settle ourselves as we listen to the story of Christ’s birth. It is indeed an old story. We have listened to it a hundred times. But that does not mean that there is nothing more to hear in it. Be still and let it work on that part of you for whose sake it exists, and you will not be disappointed. It is the perfect story. And it is only the beginning. 

[1] Eugene Peterson, Eat This Book, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 40.
[2] Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative, (New York: Basic, 2011), 58.
[3] C. S. Lewis, “Myth Became Fact,” in God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970), 57.
[4] George MacDonald, “The Fantastic Imagination,” in The Gifts of the Child Christ, Vol. 1 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1973), 25–26.
[5] Ibid., 25.