The Mysterious Gathering On December 25.

The Strange Events of Christmas at Casa Lovejoy

Now those who had been scattered by the persecution that broke out when Stephen was killed travelled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus and Antioch, spreading the word only among Jews. Some of them, however, men from Cyprus and Cyrene, went to Antioch and began to speak to Greeks also, telling them the good news about the Lord Jesus. -Acts 11:19-20

It’s a mystery. Across my Christmas table, behind plates that had once held turkey and ham, potatoes, mashed and seasoned, and perfectly cooked Brussels sprouts were a host of clues. Across from me were hearty folk of Eastern European stock sitting beside a woman of Swiss-German heritage. There was my daughter-in-law from a proud tribe of Ghana, my wife the result of splicing the Swiss-German heritage with a branch from Shanghai Jewish and undiscovered Alabama-Anglo DNA. I am from a more common genealogical experiment that combined English and Scotch-Irish barbarian tribes whose claim to fame includes overthrowing the Roman Empire. Also at the table are our two blond-haired sons, strong, tall, and in the prime of their life, witnesses to some Nordic strain in my family genealogy, forgotten but possibly the result of some six-foot Viking invaders defeating my 5-foot English ancestors in a battle for supremacy thousands of years ago. The mystery is that so many cultural, economic, religious, and linguistic barriers between humans have been overcome for me to gather together on December 25 with these people whom I love. What could cause such a strange historical aberration to occur? This is a mystery worth solving.

On this, the day after Christmas, I retire to my study and, as detectives in so many TV shows do, I look at the three clues prominently displayed on my whiteboard.

Clue #1

The first clue is the date of the celebration. There wasn’t any reason for this particular selection of human DNA to celebrate anything on the day ancient Romans called “Dies Natalis Solis Invicti.” We had no obvious compulsion to celebrate “the birthday of the Invincible Sun.” The winter solstice still marks the re-emergence of our climate from the dark and cold days of winter. But we are no longer dependent upon farming for our well-being. None of us can trace our families back to any elites of the Roman Empire. Though our shared language depends upon Latin in many ways, we couldn’t conjugate a Latin verb for our lives. We don’t even believe in the Roman gods but use them for entertainment in comics and movies. In fact, on this day of the celebration of the Sun, we are celebrating the nativity of a baby born, in a rather sketchy way, to poorer folk among a people oppressed by the Romans. So why would we celebrate on this particular day? Maybe the second clue will help.

Clue #2

Our second clue to the mystery of our meal is the fragment of an ancient manuscript, quoted above, that speaks of an unknown number of Jewish men. We have no physical description. We don’t even have their names. But some grew up in northeastern Libya and others on the third largest island in the Mediterranean. They were all running for their lives from Jerusalem, the capital of their native land. But the strangest thing here is that they have the joy of sharing good news with people they meet while escaping imprisonment or death. It was news of a religious nature which made some sense to the stories their people had been telling themselves about the relationship between people and God. But they shared it, not just with other Jews but with people who believed in a different story about humans and gods, a story much closer to the Roman stories of Zeus and his dysfunctional family. Why would they do that? As Alice said in Wonderland, things are “curiouser and curiouser.” My eyes move to the third clue, from a still more ancient manuscript.

Clue #3

My third clue is an ancient passage we read at the start of our meal. It is far older than the first one, from a series of visions and interpretations of the Jewish people's past, present, and future. Originally written in Hebrew, these verses speak of a nativity:

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and for ever. The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this. -Isaiah 9:6-7

Again, this clue gives us a few broad specifics. The child was described as a Jewish male with the highest virtue and incredible power—so much so that he is larger than life, fulfilling the political longings of humans across the globe. For hundreds of years after Isaiah, the Jewish people waited for this child to be born. But for centuries this promise wasn’t fulfilled. Could this clue connect to the good news of the men from Cyprus and Cyrene?

An Additional Clue

I opened the Bible on my desk to look at another promise; the beginning of the plot line that carries us from Genesis to Revelation. The story tells us of a man named Abram who accepted an offer from a God he and his family hadn’t known. The promise was that if he set aside all of the boundaries that gave him a sense of self, his family, his traditions, and his lived experience, for an ill-defined adventure, he would find protection, posterity, and a good reputation beyond anything he had hoped for. Translated from the Hebrew it reads:

The Lord had said to Abram, ‘Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.

‘I will make you into a great nation,

and I will bless you;

I will make your name great,

and you will be a blessing.

I will bless those who bless you,

and whoever curses you I will curse;

and all peoples on earth

will be blessed through you.’ -Genesis 12:1-3

Standing up from my desk, I pick up a whiteboard pen and try to make connections. I wrote the passage from Genesis 12 and drew a line from it to the Isaiah passage. The promise of the first, made to the Jewish descendants of Abraham includes Isaiah. He lived through oppression by the Babylonian and Assyrian superpowers and, in this passage, is encouraging his people to believe that God will fulfill his Genesis 12 promise through the birth of a child; that a child would be born who would fulfill the promise. Those puzzle pieces fit together but we still have the other two clues. How do they fit together with the good news the refugees from Jerusalem shared with Jews and Greeks and the meal on a Roman feast day that I just celebrated around my table?

Putting the pen down, I step back and sit at my desk to get a wider perspective. I remember hearing that World War I wasn’t called “World War I” until World War II. The first world war was known as “The Great War” until the Second World War was fought. Then the meaning of the earlier war developed and became the first of two wars. What if the connections between the first two clues and the second two clues follow a similar pattern?

The Isaiah passage could have gained new meaning after the nativity of the baby in Bethlehem. What if the good news the Jewish men from Cyprus and Cyrene shared was a renewed belief in the promise to Abraham from the passage in Isaiah in light of the birth of Jesus? What if while escaping persecution, they realized this new interpretation activated the last part of the promise in a new way, “and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” That is why they shared the good news with Greeks and Jews.

I stood up again, picked up the white board pen, and drew the connecting lines. It works. But it still doesn’t explain the celebration on December 25th. Unless, that is, the good news passed from the Jews to the Greeks, from the Greeks to the Romans so effectively that the Romans began to see themselves as recipients of the promise to Abraham? What if, over time, the story seeped so deeply into their cultural psyche that an entire Empire decided to convert their birthday celebration of the Invincible Sun into a birthday celebration of a different Son; fulfilling an ancient promise to nomadic man of a different ethnicity, from a different country, following a different God whom they now called their own. It is possible. But the story seems less like history and more like science fiction.

The proof is in the pictures from yesterday on my cell phone. More than 1,500 years ago Latin-speaking Romans changed the name of the celebration on December 25th from Dies Natalis Solis Invicti to Hodie, Christus Natus Est!, in English, “Today Christ is Born!” That is why a combination of Eastern European Jews Swiss-German folk, Irish-English people (with a bit of Viking thrown in), and Ghanaians feasted together on December 25, 2024.

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