The Drama and the Miracle of Christmas Then and Now

Joerg Rieger

Drama and precariousness are markers of Jesus’s birth rather than peace and tranquility. “Silent Night, Holy Night” does not capture what it means to be born in a stable at a time when many babies and quite a few of their mothers died in childbirth. Jesus’s life is at high risk right from the beginning. Immediately after his birth, his life is put in danger again by King Herod, who is worried about possible competition. 

The ancient stories are well known. Alerted by wise men from the east about the birth of a “king of the Jews” (Matt. 2:3), Herod and his advisory council of chief priests and scribes try to locate the child. But while the wise men manage to find the baby Jesus, the Herodians do not seem to be able to get to him. Herod’s search is further set back by the wise men refusing to be informants. The shepherds who find Jesus in the Gospel of Luke are smart enough not to alert the authorities either. In order to eliminate any possible challenge to his power, Herod has all male children under two years killed (Matt. 2:16). Jesus’s life is spared only because his family escapes to Egypt as refugees, living in exile for a while.

This is the drama of Christmas. Unfortunately, the precariousness of Jesus’ life from its very beginning is often overlooked and so are the conditions that account for it. As a result, we miss one of the most essential lessons of Christmas, which is the resilience of God, people, and planet in the face of great and growing adversity caused by the power grabs of the few at the expense of the many.

First, there is the increasing quest of the Roman Empire for control over the world that accounts for the census that put Jesus’s parents on the road and for the crowded conditions of Jesus’s birth in a stable, as narrated in the Gospel of Luke. Recall that Rome was initially a republic rather than an empire, and that Augustus, the emperor at the time of Jesus’s birth mentioned by Luke, was only the second Roman Emperor after Ceasar.

Second, at a lower level of imperial reality, there were vassals like Herod and his authorities, who derived their power from the Roman Empire. Even the chief priests around Herod, mentioned in the Gospel of Matthew, served at the pleasure of the Roman governor in Jerusalem. To preserve their own power, Herod and the priests made sure to control their own people. Note that the contestation here is not about religion—Herod, the priests, and Jesus and his family were all Jewish—but about power.

Still, the drama of Christmas, which is produced by the ruses of empire at all levels, throws new light on the miracle of Christmas. This miracle has various layers.

The first layer of the miracle of Christmas is that the divine choses to become human not as member of the families of Caesar Augustus, King Herod, or the chief priests. God becomes human as member of an ordinary family of the working class whose survival depends on its resilience in the face of empire. Fast forward this scenario to 2024 and ask yourself where (and where not) the divine might become human today.

The second layer of the miracle of Christmas is the emerging solidarity of heaven, people, and the earth. Jesus’s family, which belongs to the working majority, survives not just because of its own ingenuity but because of the solidarity of many, including shepherds, wise men, stars, angels, and even  animals. For good reason, nativity scenes include not only stars and angels but also animals that provide wool, milk, and transportation. In 2025, the solidarity of the ninety-nine percent working majority, of organic intellectuals in church and academy, and of other-than-human nature both heavenly and earthly is needed more than ever.

The third layer of the miracle of Christmas is that the solidarity forming around Jesus not only overcomes drama and precariousness but thrives against all odds. The historians of the time busily writing the histories of the Roman Empire missed most of it, even Josephus.  The common people, on the other hand, embraced emerging alternatives to such a degree that they become threats to the empire, just like Jesus. The markers of this the solidarity forming around Jesus were not nationality or dominant religiosity (“neither Jew nor Greek” and certainly not Roman) but being made “one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28). This solidarity is expressed in good news to those who are forced to live precarious lives (“the poor”), in liberty for prisoners, vision to the deluded, and liberation for the oppressed (Luke 4:18-19). 

The historians of the present, who are getting ready to write the history of new political administrations in the United States and elsewhere that are ever more openly declaring their imperial aspirations, should better make sure not to miss once again where the real history is made: in life that emerges in the midst of drama and precariousness but eventually overcomes it. Let’s not forget that the Roman Empire is no more, that Augustus, Herod, and their chief priests are long dead, but that the solidarity of Jesus’s precarious life that we’re celebrating on Christmas endures in the most unexpected places.