The messiah was born two thousand years ago in an animal food trough

And that's what Christmas happens to be really all about

Well, It’s that time of year.

‘Tis the season for manger scenes, frenetic shopping, sugar highs, and an incessant stream of bad Netflix Christmas movies.

And of course, as theologians routinely and ruthlessly remind us every year, Christmas really has nothing really to do with an annual massacre of five-inch fir trees, fat old men in red suits that hang out for a brief stint amid the shrinking supply of department stores, or the spiced, spiked eggnog no one ever drinks any other season of the year.

There’s a reason for the season, as we know. Or not.

But the reason may not what even what those preoccupied with the true “spiritual” meaning of Christmas have dared to imagine.

Perhaps the genuine implication of Christmas is that God – whatever or whoever that word connotes in our cliché-encrusted little cerebellums – is capable of doing unimaginable, inconceivable, notwithstanding absolutely impossible things anywhere, anyhow, and at virtually any time.

You need to stop all your bustling around with the red-and-green-iced shortbread cookies for a minute and focus your attention on the cute little hand-carved wooden creche that’s been handed down for three generations in your family and which you pull out dutifully from the storage closet year after year once the aroma of the Thanksgiving turkey has faded from the hallway and kitchen.

Consider.

The most iconic of Christmas creche creations in baby Jesus in a manger. What’s a“manger”? Just be reminded that you wouldn’t every want to put a real one in your living room.

The English noun is spelled exactly the same as the French verb manger, which means “to eat”. Mangers are, and were, food troughs for domestic livestock.

Jesus was born in a barnyard, and it certainly would have smelled like one. The cute little “manger scene” we sentimentally cluck over (pun intended) every December is the ancient Near Eastern equivalent of posing for your wedding, confirmation, Bar Mitzvah, or Quinceañera photos while you’re slopping the hogs.

The Gospel of Luke tells us that Jesus was born in this lowly and humiliating way because Caesar Augustus had issued a “decree” that a census be taken, primarily for the purpose of identifying all viable sources of taxable wealth to be extorted by the imperial regime in Rome, which was now consolidating its iron grip on the lands of the Eastern Mediterranean.

As a result “Joseph…went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child.” (Luke 2:4-5)

Now there is a rather disconcerting, complex, and not exactly peace-on-earth-goodwill-toward-men context to the tale told by the gospel writer that can only be filled in by inferences from other classical authors, archaeology, or non-Christian Jewish observers and commentators.

First, as the ancient historian Josephus notes, the imposition of the census was what sparked the first in a series of Jewish revolts against Rome, which culminated in the destruction of the Jerusalem temple in 70 AD.

G.J. Goldberg in his historical blog points out that a large part of the population pushed back against the forced census. The pushback itself was launched by a guy named Judas of Galilee, who came from Jesus’ home district. In short, “Jesus and the resistance against Rome are born at the same moment.”

Some historical details in Luke’s account conflict with that of Josephus, especially when it comes to who actually was in charge of Judea during the decade Jesus was born. But it is quite clear that the journey to Bethlehem cannot be described as Joseph and Mary deciding at the last moment merely to take a road trip.

Even if they had elected to defy the political pressure of their fellow Galileans and submit to Rome’s cruel and highly contested authority, they probably would have been looking over their shoulders the whole time in fear they might be branded as collaborators.

Or they might have even been on some kind of covert mission for the “resistance”. No one really knows.

The second contextual conundrum to consider is that Mary was pregnant, even though the couple was only engaged.

Luke tells us that Joseph traveled to Bethlehem “to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child” (v. 5).

The Gospel of Matthew minces few words about this anomaly – or perhaps we should say perceived indiscretion.

This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about . His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.

So we have an untoward birth under fraught circumstances in a period of extreme political turmoil to parents caught up in what seems to be a brewing moral scandal. Doesn’t sound like the Hallmark card version of Christmas any longer, does it?

The Biblical scholar Bruce Chilton goes so far as to argue that the evidence from both the New Testament and later rabbinic source would strongly indicate that Jesus grew up with the shameful charge that he was a mamzer, or child of an illegitimate union between a Jew and a foreigner.

But let’s inject one more unsettling element into this squalid miasma. Writing in The New York Times Peter Wehner emphasizes that seemingly inauspicious birth of the Messiah, as Christians believe, was not at all surprising, since “one of the forgotten facts of the story of Jesus’ life is that he came from a profoundly dysfunctional family.”

That’s right. “Jesus himself came from a line of murderers, adulterers, cheats and frauds”.

David himself, the messianic prototype, wasn’t exactly an exemplary character. Think the Bathsheba debacle.

Jesus was born in a very messy way in an extremely messed up world to an inconsequential young couple whose levels very well might have been a real mess to begin with.

Yet, in midst of this huge mess something incredible, but almost indiscernible, happened - something that changed everything once and for all, even though few had any clue at the time, and even more today are still just as clueless.

That’s what Christmas is really all about.

It is of course about a God who becomes utterly immersed in the mess. The theological idea of the “incarnation” – the word become “flesh”, as the prologue to the Gospel of John characterizes it – underscores it. One can translate the Greek word sarx (“flesh”) loosely as “mess”.

But God get down and dirty in order to clean up the mess – again, once and for all.

If we truly envision what it means for the “savior of the world” to be born in an animal food trough we can begin to get the picture.