Why I'm still holding onto Christmas

While others have been making—and maybe even already breaking—new year’s resolutions or choosing their one word for 2014, I’m still holding onto Christmas. After all, it was only this Sunday at church that our magi finally arrived at the nativity scene in front of the sanctuary. At home, our nativity scene remained in place to mark Epiphany yesterday, and I might just leave it up a while longer.

It may well be that Jesus’ birth was not actually at this time of year at all. The Gospel of Luke includes shepherds in the fields with their sheep (Luke 2:8), which would have been more likely in spring. And a rare meeting of Saturn and Jupiter, also in the spring, may have been the star sign observed by the magi.

We had a fascinating guest speaker Sunday (aka my husband, Gary, who is a New Testament scholar and teacher) who explained this in detail and has posted a simplified version here. He suggested that he might even celebrate the birth of Jesus later in May, without all the hoopla that tends to surround Christmas in December. After his sermon, several people said they might join him!