The First Christmas

by Marcus J. Borg

  The terrible truth is that our world has never established peace through victory. Victory establishes not peace, but lull. Thereafter, violence returns once again, and always worse than before. And it is that escalator violence that then endangers our world.

  The four-week period of Advent before Christmas—and the six-week period of Lent before Easter—are times of penance and life change for Christians. In our book The Last Week, we suggested that Lent was a penance time for having been in the wrong procession and a preparation time for moving over to the right one by Palm Sunday. That day’s violent procession of the horse-mounted Pilate and his soldiers was contrasted with the nonviolent procession of the donkey-mounted Jesus and his companions. We asked: in which procession would we have walked then and in which do we walk now?

  We face a similar choice each Christmas, and so each Advent is a time of repentance for the past and change for the future. Do we think that peace on earth comes from Caesar or Christ? Do we think it comes through violent victory or nonviolent justice? Advent, like Lent, is about a choice of how to live personally and individually, nationally and internationally.

  Christmas is not about tinsel and mistletoe or even ornaments and presents, but about what means will we use toward the end of a peace from heaven upon our earth. Or is “peace on earth” but a Christmas ornament taken each year from attic or basement and returned there as soon as possible?

  PART III

  LIGHT, FULFILLMENT, AND JOY

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  LIGHT AGAINST THE DARKNESS

  The stories of the first Christmas are resplendent with light. In Matthew, the star of Bethlehem shines in the night sky to guide the wise men to the place of Jesus’s birth. In Luke, the night is filled with light, radiant with the glory of the Lord, as angels bring the news of Jesus’s birth to shepherds keeping watch over their flocks: “And the glory of the Lord shone all around them.” And more, two of the hymns in Luke’s story climax with light imagery: “The dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness” (1:78–79); Jesus is “a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel” (2:32).

  Later in this chapter, we will treat these texts in detail. But we begin with the symbolism of light and its meanings. Light is an ancient archetypal symbol. It is also central to ancient Judaism and early Christianity, the context in which Matthew and Luke wrote their stories of Jesus’s birth.

  And, to say the obvious, light in the darkness is central to the Christian celebration of Christmas. Jesus is born in the deepest darkness—in the middle of the night at the winter solstice. This is not historical time, not a historical fact about the date of Jesus’s birth, but parabolic time, metaphorical time, sacred time, symbolic time. The symbolism is perfect.

  Nobody knows the day, the month, or the season of the year of Jesus’s birth. The date of December 25 was not decided upon until the middle of the 300s. Before then, Christians celebrated his birth at different times—including March, April, May, and November. But around the year 350 Pope Julius in Rome declared December 25 as the date, thereby integrating it with a Roman winter solstice festival celebrating the “Birthday of the Unconquered Sun.” The Roman birthday of the sun became the Christian birthday of the Son.

  To this association of the birth of Jesus with the winter solstice was added the symbolism of it happening at night. “Night” abounds in the words of familiar Christmas carols:

  Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright.

  O holy night, the stars are brightly shining; it is the night

  of our dear Savior’s birth.

  O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie.

  Beneath thy deep and dreamless sleep, the silent stars roll by.

  Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting light.

  It came upon the midnight clear, that glorious song of old.

  In the middle of the night, on the longest night of the year, the time of deepest darkness, Jesus is born. He is, as John 1:9 puts it, the true light that enlightens everyone, the light of the world.

  LIGHT AS ARCHETYPAL SYMBOL

  Light is an archetypal symbol. An archetype, as the roots of the word suggest, is an image, a “type” imprinted in human consciousness from ancient times, from “the beginning.” Known across cultures, the archetype of light, with its opposite of darkness, is central to religious traditions around the world. It is also, as we will see, central to the Jewish Bible, the New Testament, and Roman imperial theology.

  It is not difficult to understand why the symbolism of light is a universal archetype. We need only imagine how our ancestors experienced night and darkness. This requires some effort, for we need to imagine a time before we learned how to illumine and domesticate the night with artificial light. It was not so long ago. Only recently have cities been illumined at night; London was apparently the first, perhaps in the 1600s. It became common in cities only after the invention of gas lighting in the late 1700s. So also household lighting is recent. According to an exhibit entitled “The History of Light” at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam a few years ago, ordinary people—meaning the majority of the population—could not afford candles until around the year 1800. When night fell, it was dark, very dark. Our ancestors knew darkness in a way that we do not.

  The archetypal associations, metaphorical associations, of night and darkness are many. In the dark, we cannot see, or at least not very well. Thus night and darkness are associated with blindness and limited vision. For the same reason, we easily get lost in the dark; we stumble around and cannot see our way. In the dark, we are often afraid. We do not know what might be going on: danger may lurk, spirits may roam, evil may be afoot. Night is the time when we are asleep, unconscious and unaware. Night and winter go together. The nights become longer, the earth loses its warmth and becomes cold and unfruitful. Darkness, grief, and mourning are associated. Grief is like a dark night, and mourners have worn dark clothing for centuries. So also night and death go together: the land of the dead is a place of great darkness.

  No wonder our ancestors valued light, the day. They welcomed the dawn and celebrated the return of light at the winter solstice. No wonder religious traditions are filled with the language of light—of enlightenment, seeing, awakening, visions, and epiphanies. No wonder glory—which means radiance, luminosity—is a central quality of the sacred.

  Given the above—we almost wrote, “in light of the above”—it is also no wonder that the associations of light and darkness are so rich in the Old Testament and earliest Christianity. Though this exposition of the significance of light imagery in the Old and New Testaments may at times seem like a detour, it is the main road for glimpsing what this archetypal image meant in the context of the world in which the birth stories originated.

  LIGHT IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

  Like the birth stories, the Old Testament is filled with the symbolism of light. In the story of creation with which the Bible of Jesus and early Christianity begins, light is the first of God’s creative acts. On the first day of creation:

  God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. (Gen. 1:3–5)

  This light is not the light of the sun, moon, and stars; they are not created until the fourth day. Rather, the light of the first day of creation is primordial light, the light that existed before sun, moon, and stars.

  In the stories of Israel’s ancestors in the Pentateuch, light imagery often symbolizes the presence of God, the nearness of the sacred. For Abraham, the father of Israel, God’s presence is imaged as “a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch” appearing to him “in a deep and terrifying darkness” (Gen. 15:12, 17). Abraham’s grandson Jacob, the father of the twelve tribes of Israel, experiences in the night a fiery ladder with angels descending and ascen
ding upon it and exclaims, “This is the gate of heaven” (Gen. 28:17). In the foundational story of the Pentateuch, the exodus from slavery in Egypt, Israel’s ancestors are led by “a pillar of fire by night, to give them light” (Exod. 13:21).

  Light imagery appears in a familiar line in one of the psalms: “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” (Ps. 119:105). Here it is light as illumination—God’s word is a lamp, lighting our way. In another psalm, the human yearning for the coming of dawn and the end of night becomes a metaphor for the psalmist’s yearning for God:

  I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope;

  my soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning,

  more than those who watch for the morning. (Ps. 130:5–6)

  The symbolism of light and darkness continues in the prophets. In the first part of the book of Isaiah, from the 700s BCE, the prophet associates the coming of light with the coming of the ideal king. The text begins: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness—on them has light shined” (9:2). As the passage continues, the “great light” shining “in a land of deep darkness” is the birth of the ideal king who would bring justice and peace. The words are familiar to millions because of Handel’s Messiah:

  For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. His authority shall grow continually, and there shall be endless peace for the throne of David and his kingdom. He will establish it and uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time onward and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this. (Isa. 9:6–7)

  This—the coming of the ideal king, the Prince of Peace who will uphold justice—is the coming of the light to those who live in a land of deep darkness.

  In the last part of the book of Isaiah, from the 500s BCE, light symbolizes the glory of God, the radiant presence of God, and God’s promise to Jerusalem. The words are addressed to the city, recently destroyed by the Babylonian conquest in 586 BCE and only humbly rebuilt after the Jewish return from exile in Babylon. Jerusalem has only a hint of its past glory as the home of Solomon’s temple and the capital of a kingdom; those are gone. To Jerusalem stripped of its glory, the prophet promises God’s glory, and the imagery is full of light:

  Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. For darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will appear over you. Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn. (Isa. 60:1–3)

  Jerusalem, filled with the glory of God, will draw the nations to its light—kings will come to the brightness of its dawn. Here light is associated not only with God, but with God’s dream for Jerusalem and the world.

  Ancient Judaism also had a festival of light. Hanukkah was (and still is) an eight-day celebration of light as the winter solstice approaches. Originating in the second century BCE, it commemorates the rededication of the temple in Jerusalem after it had been desecrated by a foreign ruler. The rededication of the temple as the home of God’s glory is celebrated as the darkness deepens.

  LIGHT IN THE NEW TESTAMENT

  The metaphorical richness of light—as God’s presence and promise, God’s illumination and God’s dream—continues in earliest Christianity. Before turning to the birth stories, it is illuminating to see how central the imagery of light is in the rest of the New Testament. As we do so, our purpose is not to present a comprehensive study of all references to light in the New Testament. It is more modest and yet important: to illustrate the centrality of this archetypal metaphor in the multiple voices of early Christianity found in the New Testament. We begin with Paul.

  Light Imagery in Paul’s Letters

  According to the book of Acts, Paul’s life-transforming experience on the road to Damascus was an experience of the risen Christ as light. Acts tells the story three times (9:1–18; 22:6–16; 26:12–18). In the first telling, narrated in the third person, we are told, “Suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him” (9:3). So also in the second telling, but now in first-person narration: “While I was on my way and approaching Damascus, about noon a great light from heaven suddenly shone about me” (22:6). The experience of the risen Christ as “a great light” initially blinded Paul, but three days later his sight was restored and “something like scales fell from his eyes” (9:18). Christ as “light” and the result as “seeing” are central in what may be the best-known conversion story in the world.

  In his letters, Paul himself uses the imagery of light. In 2 Corinthians, he speaks of “the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ” (4:4) and then refers to the first act of creation:

  For it is the God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. (4:6)

  The passage is rich and dense, and to suggest some of its possible meanings concisely risks not doing justice to it.

  We begin by noting the obvious. It is filled with light imagery—not only the words “light,” “darkness,” “shine,” and “shone,” but also the word “glory.” The biblical words translated into English as “the glory of God” have the connotation of a radiant, luminous presence. Glory, radiance, and luminosity go together. The glory of God is the radiant, luminous presence of God.

  The passage piles up these images, as in “the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ.” The gospel (not yet meaning a written document, but rather “the good news”) is light, illumination. And it is “the gospel of the glory of Christ”—of the radiant presence of Christ, the luminosity of Christ. The gospel is light, and it is about light.

  And the passage continues: this light, this glory, comes from “the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness.’” This God, the God who created light in the darkness, Paul says, “has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” Here three images of light are piled together: God has “shone in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God”—and all three are seen “in the face of Jesus Christ.”

  Though “face” is not a light metaphor, it is a visual metaphor. “In the face of Jesus Christ,” we see “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God.” It is an extraordinary and marvelous claim about Jesus: his “face” reveals the “light of the knowledge” that comes from the “glory of God.” Further, he is the revelation of the God who said, “Let there be light.” The God who created light in the beginning has now become known in Jesus. The light has become light in the face of Jesus.

  Light Imagery in John’s Gospel

  Light and darkness are central to the presentation of Jesus in the gospel of John. Written near the end of the first century, John’s gospel is a witness, a testimony, to how the Christian community for whom its author wrote saw Jesus. The imagery appears at the very beginning in the prologue to the gospel (1.1–18), much of which may have been an early Christian hymn or, at the very least, a prose poem.

  John’s prologue begins, as the book of Genesis does, with the words “In the beginning.” And what was in the beginning was “the Word,” logos in Greek. The Word, the logos, was not only with God in the beginning, but was God, and through the Word, the logos, God created everything that is. Then light imagery appears: “In the logos was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it” (1:4–5). A few verses later: “The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world” (1:9). The light, of course, is Jesus.

  Recall that John does not have a birth story. But this passage virtually functions at its equivalent: the coming of Jesus, the incarnation, is the coming of “the true light, which enlightens everyone.” The imagery of light and darknes
s announced in the prologue continues throughout the gospel. For John, Jesus is “the light of the world” (8:12; 9:5).

  Light Imagery in Revelation

  To complete our illustrative survey of light imagery in the New Testament, we turn to the book of Revelation. This much misunderstood book concludes with a magnificent vision of the “new Jerusalem” (21:1–22:5). It is a vision of life on earth, for the “new Jerusalem” descends to the earth. In it there will be no more tears, no more mourning and crying and pain, and death will be no more (21:4). The city will be fantastically be-jeweled and huge. It will have no temple, “for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb” (21:22).

  Then the imagery turns to light:

  And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. The nations shall walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. Its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there. (21:23–25)

  A few verses later, the vision reaches its climax with a return to the theme of light: “And there will be no more night; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light” (22:5). The new Jerusalem is a city of light, and its light is the glory—the radiant presence—of God and Jesus.

  All of the above—light imagery in the Old Testament and in early Christianity—is part of the context in which the stories of Jesus birth were told. Writing near the end of the first century, the authors of Matthew and Luke composed their gospels within the contexts of an early Christianity suffused with the imagery of light.