Mick Clifford: Jesus was born at home with not a donkey in sight

He reacted by delivering a donkey and a few sheep into a makeshift crib in St Stephen’s Green to save his idea of a traditional Christmas.

At least now the young for whom the season is sprinkled with magic would get a chance to see up close the kind of animals who shared that hallowed stable in Bethlehem with Joseph, Mary, and their newborn all those years ago.

One doesn’t have to have experienced a Catholic childhood to appreciate the nativity scene at this time of year. The hopes and dreams of mankind can be distilled down into that lonely outpost on 24 December.

There were no lodgings available in Bethlehem for the couple arriving from the backwater in Nazareth, despite Mary hovering on the cusp of giving birth. They pulled up with the donkey at this stable and tried to make the most of things, ready to effect a home birth many miles from their home. In terms of entering the world, this is as far from the centre of power as a newborn could be, the longest journey to travel, sharing the fate of the meek, the dispossessed, and the lonely.

It’s an alluring image to introduce the person of Jesus Christ who would go on to preach and pray, gathering followers wherever he went and putting the frighteners on those who wielded power. His impact during his lifetime would be multiplied exponentially after his violent death on a cross, spawning a religion that would endure for millenniums and spread throughout the globe.

Yet such were his humble beginnings, born in a manger, with just his parents in attendance. And afterward, the shepherds dropped by to witness the first stirrings of this child of grace. Then within days, a celestial message has been transmitted to the East that the saviour has been born.

The three wise men show up with their gifts as if they were Patrick Donovan raiding the Office of Public Works. What an entry into the world for the Son of God, the King of the oppressed Jews, the man who will change the world like no other.

Except it ain’t true. It’s all the stuff of legend. None of it happened, certainly not according to historians who know their stuff. One such historian is Jesuit priest Jose A Pagola who is a biblical historian and author of the book, Jesus: A Historical Approximation.

This priest is not a doubting Thomas. He is a true believer, dedicated to his religion. “My fundamental purpose is to approximate Jesus with historical rigor and in simple language, to bring his person and message closer to today’s men and women,” he writes.

So what about the beginnings of this man who, despite what John Lennon once claimed, was more famous than even The Beatles? The life and times of Jesus Christ were documented by four of his apostles, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Yet only two of them, Matthew and Luke, tell the story of Bethlehem.

“The first two chapters in the gospels of Matthew and Luke give a set of stories about the conception, birth, and infancy of Jesus,” the Jesuit writes. “They are traditionally called the ‘infancy gospels’ … They were collected not to give information on the actual events (about which probably little was known) but to proclaim the Good News that Jesus is the Davidic Messiah that Israel was waiting for, and the Son of God born to save humanity.”

That of itself is strange if the circumstances of Jesus’ birth were set in stone as a marker for the man he would become.

Mark does mention Jesus’ early years in the town of Nazareth: “Is this not the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us”. That suggests that far from being an only child he was part of a large family. This line in the gospel was subsequently interpreted as referencing Jesus’ “cousins and near relatives”, but according to Pagola, “later historians say they were brothers and sisters … (the) sisters’ names were unknown because women were considered unimportant.”

That latter observation is one, it could easily be argued, that endured for about two thousand years in the church founded by Christ.

So here’s the real deal from the experts about the birth of Christ. He was born at home in Nazareth, one of a large family of boys and girls. There was no stable, no nativity scene, no doors closed in the face of his parents.

 Like many other, probably lesser, beings who went on to make a major mark on history, his beginnings were inauspicious and ordinary.

His family circumstances also quite obviously give rise to another thorny issue, that of the immaculate conception. Suffice it to say that if Jesus was one of a big family, questions arise as to how that one was pulled off, but we’ll leave it for another day. Neither is today the day for parsing the other legendary element of the man’s life, that of the ascension.

What we do know, because it is historically documented, is that he emerged into the public eye around 28AD when John the Baptist was making a name for himself. He lived, he became well known, and he was regarded by many who encountered him as a top man and a force for good.

He died a violent death at the hands of the occupying Romans because they considered him a threat. And he certainly left his mark, with the assistance of the four lads who compiled the versions of his biography. To that extent, his birth however it went down, is well worth celebrating.

But the stable and the animals? It didn’t happen. The man first saw the light of day back home near the Sea of Galilee, most likely surrounded by older siblings who oohed and awed at his arrival. There were no shepherds wandering in for a sconce. The three wise men never left the East, and God knows you couldn’t blame them for staying put at the height of winter.

So somebody should give Patrick O’Donovan a shout. He got the wrong end of the stick altogether. He needs to set those animals free. Happy Christmas.