As we start to look at this whole Christmas phenomenon, it makes sense to begin with the basics. The first questions any sensible person asks about Christmas are pretty straightforward: What event is this holiday supposed to commemorate, and how do we know it happened?
The short answers are that Christmas is a holiday commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ, a Jewish prophet and holy man who lived about 2,000 years ago, whose followers came to believe that he was the Son of God. And we know about this, despite all the years that have come and gone since, for two reasons. First, more than 2 billion Christians around the world, the largest religious community in the history of our species, testify to the existence and the influence of this prophet, and second, because as it happens, early followers of the prophet wrote down what they and their community knew about the circumstances of his birth.
The documentary sources for the Christmas story are pretty good by the standards of the ancient world, but few and short by the standards of our time. Of the four “Gospels” (books in the collection of Christian scriptures known as the ‘New Testament’ that offer narratives about the life and death of Jesus), two provide information about Jesus’ birth. A third offers a theological reflection on the meaning of his birth, and the fourth (the Gospel of Mark) says nothing about Christmas at all.