Two Nativity Stories

Two Parables

The photo above is of the crèche that’s on a side table in my living room. My mother bought it in the early 1950s, and every Christmas my parents displayed it on our fireplace mantel. For the last twenty years, my husband and I have followed suit. Today I took a close look at it, something I haven’t done in years. I saw Mary and Joseph (both worse for the wear), the baby Jesus, a sheep, a king and his camel, an angel, but no shepherds. There should have been at least one, but he probably got lost in the tissue paper my family used to wrap these figures. And that king shouldn’t be there at all.  

The reason the king shouldn’t be there is that a crèche is a model or tableau representing the manger scene of Jesus’s birth displayed in homes or public places at Christmas, and the manger scene appears only in Luke’s story.  Matthew tells a different story, one which includes the magi, or wise men (probably not kings), who bring gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh to the home of Mary and Joseph. However, many crèches and many Christmas plays in churches “harmonize” or conflate Luke’s Christmas story with Matthew’s. 

So why should it matter if we conflate Christmas stories in Luke and Matthew and fail to notice the differences? The short answer is that we miss the reasons Luke and Matthew used them as prologues to their narratives of Jesus’s life and teachings. New Testament scholars pay attention to historical and cultural context and literary devices, which are the building blocks of effective writing, and in doing so, they help readers see these gospels in fresh ways. 

I’m fascinated by this notion of seeing the nativity stories as parables because Noel regards his narrative songs as parabolic. Some examples are “Jean Claude,”  “Remember/Pokey,” “Virtual Party,” “For Christmas,” and “Christmas Dinner.”  We often talk about  the capacity of parable to open up new ways of seeing and evoke questions for ongoing reflection. In his biography, Noel writes about how he wants listeners to be able to own the message of his songs. When we see the nativity stories as parables, perhaps we will hear them in new ways. 

An example in this season of Advent is John Dominic Crossan and Marcus J. Borg’s The First Christmas: What the Gospels Really Teach about Jesus’s Birth in which they regard the nativity stories as parables that introduce the rest of each gospel narrative. It’s easy to dismiss the nativity stories as sweet but irrelevant to life in 2023 America when we encounter them out of the context of Caesar’s empire, which was created and maintained through violence. By viewing the nativity stories as parables, Crossan and Borg raise the question of what is means to celebrate Jesus’s birth and its message of peace on earth as citizens of an empire. They want readers to see Luke’s story is about peace on earth achieved not throught violence but through justice, when everyone gets a fair share of God’s earth as God’s children.

Vibrations

Enjoy this claymation of Noel’s “Christmas Dinner.” Originally written in 1963, it wasn’t  released until 1969 on the album, "Peter, Paul & Mommy” (which reached #12 on that year's Billboard Pop album chart and was also awarded a Grammy the following year for Best Album for Children). The song was arranged by Milton Okun and produced by Milton with Phil Ramone. Later it was issued as a 45" single by Warners, with Tom Paxton's “The Marvelous Toy” gracing the other side.

In 1980, “Christmas Dinner” was used as the inspiration and soundtrack for a long form music video called A Christmas Gift. The late Will Vinton, whose Closed Monday won an Oscar in 1975 for Best Animated Short Film, directed this eight minute vignette that gives the song even more of a Dickensian feel. It won an award for Best Animation at the 15th Annual Hemisfilm International Film Festival, San Antonio, Texas, in 1981.

Noel has re-edited the classic claymation footage to fit his newly recorded version of the song on his album Somethin’ Special: A Noel Paul Stookey Holiday Recollection, where it truly becomes a heartwarming memory.

Resonance

Does regarding the nativity stories as parables change your experience of them?  If so, how?

Sallie McFague, a scholar of theology and literature, wrote, “Parables are not riddles that give privileged information to those who solve them. They are primarily concerned  not with knowing but with doing (understood as deciding on a new way of life based on a new insight).”

What other parables have spoken to you?