Details of the Christmas scene aren't the important part

Next to the resurrection of Christ, his birth is the most celebrated event for Christians. What do we really know about that birth? Not much and many of the images we’ve built up may be flawed.

There is not a lot actually written in the Bible about the birth of Christ. What is written, though certainly stimulates lots of imagery. Facts to back up the imagery are pretty short.

A few years ago at Christmas I got into a pretty hot debate with a preacher about things like was it winter or was it spring? Was the child born in a stable, a cave or the lower level of a typical home? Many of those homes had areas on that level that were used to keep animals in at night or in bad weather, so that is a good bet.

It is also thought that at that time in the Bethlehem area shepherds used natural caves for shelter for themselves and the animals. Chances are in that part of the world, no matter what time of year, temperatures would have been mild. It probably wasn’t cold as we like to relate. If they were bunked out in the lower room of a house as some believe it probably wasn’t quiet because family would have been sharing the house with them.

The nativity image we all recreate on our mantels and on our lawns of Jesus in a wooden manger along with Mary and Joseph in a barn or stable with animals all around and the wise men with their camels pulled up nearby and a few worshipping shepherds is probably pretty wrong.

The wise men might have been wise but they didn’t arrive on the scene for awhile. If Jesus was laid in a manger as Scripture says clearly, we know that it wasn’t made of wood because historically they were carved from stone.

The young family might have been “away” in a manger and not beneath the relatives’ loft if Joseph’s extended family living there had shunned the couple because of the perceived illegitimate child about to be born. We don’t know from Scripture how that family dynamic was all playing out by this time in the pregnancy.

One of the things we do know from Scripture is that shepherds were the first to be informed of the birth by angels as they tended their flocks in the fields.

One of the things I have long heard was that this area was known to supply pure lambs for sacrifice at the nearby temple in Jerusalem. So I was jolted when I read a friend’s Facebook post this past week about one possible symbolism of the manger besides denoting the Savior’s lowly upbringing. It was there but it never sunk in with me.

That explanation holds that the manger, made of stone, was a safe and secure spot off the ground. Shepherds had long protected and preserved the unblemished lambs to be used for sacrifice (the most important of the flock) by binding them up in cloth and placing them in the stone manger.

Therefore, when angels proclaimed they would find the baby, swaddled and in a manger, they immediately knew that this child was important and precious to the world because of the symbolism they could relate to as poor shepherds. He was indeed the Messiah.

The details of what the scene looked like shouldn’t be important to us over 2,000 years later. That perfect sacrifice brought to Earth that night to save a sinful world is all that is important.

Karl Terry writes for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at:

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