The Meaning of Christmas (Pagan Version)

Imagine with me a massive global manhunt. The son of a major world leader has disappeared, and no one is able to find him. A host of policemen, CIA units, FBI agents, and journalists are scouring the globe, turning up various clues and evidence. Each group has its own theory about where he could be. These theories are published constantly, and everyone an opinion about which one is the correct one.

And then, one day, the son shows up.

He explains that he was kidnapped by a terrorist organization and offers eyewitness proof of his abduction, confinement, and escape. Medical testing confirms what he’s said. It fits the clues that have been unearthed by the investigators and reporters. Everything is at last made clear.

Suppose now that a CIA agent is so certain about his theory, or a talk show host so unwilling to give up the hot story, that they refuse to believe him. They spread a rumor that the son is still missing, that their story was the right one all along. The claimant, they say, is an imposter. His story is just an imitation of their own theories, and their claims have an equal right to be heard. They argue that the search has brought us together as a nation, and for the sake of the public welfare it ought to go on. The claimant, who would end it, is an enemy to free thought and the general good.

Keep this story in the back of your mind when you think about Christianity’s claims with regard to paganism. Christianity doesn’t oppose pagan belief because the pagans were misguided in their goals or savage in their methods; we just claim they drew the wrong conclusions. Like the reporters and policemen, they gathered the clues and began to understand them, but they didn’t have the full story.

The history of religion is the story of a massive global manhunt. Everyone has an opinion on how to find god; everyone has a theory (some more logical than others). For millennia the search went on, with all sorts of theories offered and debated. And then, one day, the person everyone had been looking for suddenly showed up.

The gospels (as much research has shown) are of a piece. There is no historical or rational basis to take some parts as true and reject others. Which means that, if you accept that a person called Jesus of Nazareth existed and said things like “do unto others,” you must also accept that he said he was God, and that he presented evidence to make his case – evidence that fit the clues everyone had been gathering.

The fundamental question separating Christianity from paganism is not one of ethics, or rituals, or cultural heritage; it is whether this man was who he claimed to be. If he was, then everything about paganism necessarily had to change.

From the Christian perspective, Christmas was the prelude to Easter. From the Jewish perspective, it was the coming of the heralded king, the anointed one. But from the pagan perspective, it was something much more radical. For millennia, they searched. They climbed mountains, instituted feasts, invented stories, made sacrifices, studied the stars, and scoured their hearts trying to reach heaven. And then, one unremarked night, heaven came to earth.

The answer to all the questions, the end of all the quests, the solution to the nameless longing, was not in a myth, a philosophy, a ritual, or a sacred text. It was in Mary’s womb. On Christmas night came the birth of one called Im-anu-el – “God with us.” And suddenly, world-shatteringly, the search was over.

In one sense, Christianity marked the end of paganism; in a more profound sense, it marks the epitome of paganism. Christianity destroyed paganism the way birth destroys pregnancy, daybreak destroys dawn, or the treasure destroys the treasure hunt. It is at once the end and the fulfillment, the termination and the culmination.

Of course, there were those who were unhappy with this ending to the story, unwilling to give up the power, prestige, or pastime the search had offered them. Some of them claim the son was an imposter, just another knock-off of the many theories. Some of them have tried to change the very nature of religion, to tell us that the search is not actually about finding anything it all; it is about all the interesting theories we come up with along the way.

But the world is not a collection of theories; it isa story, a history, with a meaning, a direction, and a purpose. Our hearts are uneasy until we find our place in this story. We are restless until we rest in him.

Here’s wishing you rest this Christmas.