Christmas presents occasion for an annual retreat from the world’s more customary madness. It offers respite from the relentless debasement of existence; hence its nostalgic quality from the 1970s when postmodernism became the dominant expression of late capitalist society.
But Christmas is a farce. Its rose-coloured portrait of human nature is not persuasive. It is a bacchanalia of factual fallacies disguised in a chaos of sublime carols. So it seems to me. Thus, it does not matter how sweetly we sing it, Christ was not born on Christmas Day. Shepherds do not watch their flock by night at this time of the year in Israel. The matter is settled not within the ambits of theology but the intersections of ecology, ethnology, geography and ethnography.
From its seasonal inconsistencies arises need for commentary on its leading cast huddled at a Bethlehem manger – Joseph, Mary and the magi. Their characters must not be static but must be periodically sieved to permit assessment of their strategic choices. This is possible if the decline of Christmas is seen against a background of structural causes and greater contemporary incredulity. Children no longer believe in Santa. Adults are sceptical about the emotional manipulation that makes buyers run up bills in December only to regret their gullibility and extravagance as early as January.
Christmas is a grand charade. Its human appeal has been hijacked by the spin doctors of capitalism. These schemers set the stage for complex delusions. They refashion the loss of global goodwill into profound business opportunity, preach peace and fraternity, amity in place of enmity, just to increase sales. For the vulnerable other-directed spender, this is quintessential market therapy. Such spending makes him feel good. He is not that bad after all. He gave food to the poor on Christmas day, put clothes on the back of some luckless people, visited an orphanage, and that was it. Christmas enabled him to atone for his predations in the preceding months when he was driven by nothing more basic or central than an acquisitive tendency.
Christmas is his valve. So I probe the role that rural psychology plays in organizing seasonal expenditure around mass hysteria during this period by exposing the actions of Joseph and the magi to considerable sociological scrutiny. Can you stand it? What was their state of mind as turmoil raged in Israel under the paranoid dictatorship of Herod the Great?
First, some background. Joseph had travelled with a very pregnant Mary to Bethlehem to be counted in an impending census. On arrival, he found the taverns were filled. The question is why?
Was Joseph broke even before Christmas? Why did he not make online reservation for a room at any of Bethlehem’s numerous hotels? At any rate, why was he looking for vacancies at an inn when he should in fact have been looking for a maternity centre or antenatal clinic? Why did he not send text messages to family members or the Carpenters’ Union of Nazareth to make arrangements for him? He should have planned ahead. Why was he not prepared?
But, really, we should go easy on Joseph. He was a good man who had had to make difficult marital choices initially. It must be hard to stay focussed when you have just been told that a powerful spirit was responsible for your wife’s pregnancy.
So, instead, let’s examine the actions of the wise men who visited Jesus. I take it they had UBA accounts because we are told ad nauseam these days that ‘wise men bank with UBA.’ If so, why did they not make electronic transfers to Joseph to enable him cope with the birth expenditure instead of carrying perishable items and gold about the place? Did they declare the gold with Customs?
The circuitous route the men took to reach Jesus does much to discredit their acclaimed wisdom. They could have used a GPS system to track the baby’s location instead of the primitive astronomy that led them first to His arch-enemy when the child was in another city. Why did they not log on to Google Maps or contact the Jerusalem Transport Corporation for the travel manifest of Joseph and Mary?
Then there is the question of their number. How many magi were there? Scripture is not precise about this. What it documents is that ‘wise men came from the east’ but this should not suggest that they were Igbo men. They bore gifts of frankincense, gold and myrrh, to symbolize Jesus’ status as priest, king and sacrifice and the immense contradictions of His illustrious life: suffering king, man of sorrows, melancholic messiah. He wept. Whether from Umuagwo or Amapu Ntingha, we cannot say that the magi were three or that they bore the gifts separately. What we do know is that, in their wisdom, they carried no Christmas cards.
