A reader sent me the following story:

The Archbishop of Canterbury said yesterday that the Christmas story of the Three Wise Men was nothing but a ‘legend’.

Dr Rowan Williams has claimed there was little evidence that the Magi even existed and there was certainly nothing to prove there were three of them or that they were kings. Archbishop says nativity ‘a legend’

Dr Williams argued that the traditional Christmas story was nothing but a ‘legend’ He said the only reference to the wise men from the East was in Matthew’s gospel and the details were very vague.

Dr Williams said: “Matthew’s gospel says they are astrologers, wise men, priests from somewhere outside the Roman Empire, that’s all we’re really told. It works quite well as legend.”

The Archbishop went on to dispel other details of the Christmas story, adding that there were probably no asses or oxen in the stable.

He argued that Christmas cards which showed the Virgin Mary cradling the baby Jesus, flanked by shepherds and wise men, were misleading. As for the scenes that depicted snow falling in Bethlehem, the Archbishop said the chance of this was “very unlikely”. advertisement

In a final blow to the traditional nativity story, Dr Williams concluded that Jesus was probably not born in December at all. He said: “Christmas was when it was because it fitted well with the winter festival.”

Fr. Dwight Longenecker has some interesting comments about the Anglican Archbishop’s comments.

Archbishop Rowan Williams has publicly debunked the traditional Nativity as ‘legend’. Anyone who has read the New Testament in detail will know that the stuff of medieval paintings, crib scenes and Christmas cards include a good deal of non-Biblical ’embroidery’. However, one doesn’t need to deconstruct all of that to somehow prove one’s intellectual credentials.

The Archbishop presents himself as an intellectual Anglo Catholic, but all his recent comments do is prove his Protestant mindset. The liberal Protestant is essentially a critic. He is a critic of the Bible, a critic of tradition, a critic of traditional Christian morality, a critic of anything that is the received religion. The liberal Protestant feels obliged to pick it apart, reduce it to facts and submit the mysteries of the faith to human reason.

What interests me is that many of our conservative Evangelical friends want to distance themselves from the liberal intellectual reductionism of the Archbishop of Canterbury, but when it comes to Catholicism are they not just as critical, just as rational, just as reductionist as the ABC? In fact, Protestantism has in its very genetic code the same rationalism, reductionism, individualism and humanism which is exhibited by the Archbishop’s comments–it’s just that in Evangelicalism it comes to move ‘conservative’ conclusions.

It is certainly true as Fr. Longenecker said that there is a lot of non-Biblical ’embroidery’ on the Nativity story, but really what has happened over time is that events have been compressed just as what often happens when a book is turned into a movie. What we have in Matthew is a mentioning of wise men who first visited Herod, later gave gifts to Jesus and then being warned in a dream left without seeing Herod first. The great Catholic apologist Frank Sheed argues in his book "To Know Christ Jesus" that they must have appeared after Mary’s Presentation in the Temple since her and Joseph paid a poor mans sacrifice of "a pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons" which they wouldn’t have done if they already had the gifts given by the wise men.

So in reality the Christmas Card view of the Nativity doesn’t fit reality and we just don’t even know for sure the number of wise men. Though surely the traditional number of three wise men is because of the gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh along with the Trinitarian overtones. The ideas of them being Kings instead of astrologers though is surely an addition. But this type of reductionism would ruin great songs and who wants to sing "We undetermined number of wise men who are probably astrologers and not kings coming somewhere from the East though sometimes after Jesus’ birth are,"

What is so silly and needless about the Archbishop’s remarks is that surely he knows how his remarks will be portrayed and seen as not only casting doubt on aspects of the Nativity story, but also on the birth of Jesus. To make these remarks just before Christmas plays right into the media’s hands. The BBC has the audio of the interview with the caption ” Simon Mayo talks to the Archbishop of Canterbury and asks if he really believes that there’s a Big Wizard who lives in the sky?”

Early in my blogging career another Church of England bishop concerned about the accuracy of the Nativity gave me the opportunity to pun away.

A Church of England bishop has attacked "sentimental" Christmas card portrayals of the Nativity, saying that Jesus’s family were asylum seekers and the three Wise Men were part of an assassination plot.

The Bishop of Lichfield, the Rt Rev Keith Sutton, said the shepherds were not the lovable characters depicted in Nativity plays but were on "the fringes of society" and that, for most people, Christmas was a chore.

Did Herod the Great contract out a hit to three foreigners for plausible deniability? How did this assassination go awry? Did King herod say "Go and murder him" and they thought he said "Gold and myrrh to him"?, frankly that makes sense.

First Things has a interesting post Looking for Mary in Christmas Carols By Michael Linton where he references just how few Christmas carols actually reference Mary.
It is hard to imagine a Christmas Crèche without Mary, but I guess most carols written since the Protestant reformation have done so.

Though this is not just a Protestant divide and something that effects just carols. Think of all the modern hymns that have unfortunately become standards in so many Catholic churches. I can think of only one one: Hail Mary: Gentle Woman. While the lyrics are okay I find the melody to be rather droning and when compared to some of the magnificent hymns for Mary, it is severely lacking. Funny with all the talk about inclusive language in the liturgy there has been no outcry against the lack of Marian hymns at most modern Masses.

Around this time of year we often hear about the "common knowledge" that the date of Christmas was in fact based on the date of a Pagan feast to do a sort of holiday one-upmanship. I have already heard this at least once this year during a television drama and often heard it from my Uncle as I was growing up.

Even in Catholic circles we often hear about Pagan holidays and practices being "baptized." Mostly we hear about this in regards to All Saints Day and Christmas. The facts are otherwise and what is not true about All Saints Day is also not true about the date of Christmas. Last year Mark Shea posted a section from his upcoming book on Mary.

Time was when I, like most people, took it for granted the winter solstice and, in particular, the Roman Feast of the Birth of the Unconquered Sun were simply pagan celebrations that hung around into Christian times. In fact, when I set out to write this book I still thought this. But I discovered the reality is far more complicated and interesting. Indeed, it turns out this widely assumed “fact” that “everybody knows” is probably another sample of pseudo-knowledge. For according to William Tighe, a church history specialist at Pennsylvania’s Muhlenberg College, “the pagan festival of the ‘Birth of the Unconquered Sun’ instituted by the Roman Emperor Aurelian on 25 December 274, was almost certainly an attempt to create a pagan alternative to a date that was already of some significance to Roman Christians. Thus the ‘pagan origins of Christmas’ is a myth without historical substance.”

For the fact is, our records of a tradition associating Jesus’ birth with December 25 are decades older than any records concerning a pagan feast on that day.

[T]he definitive “Handbook of Biblical Chronology” by professor Jack Finegan (Hendrickson, 1998 revised edition) cites an important reference in the “Chronicle” written by Hippolytus of Rome three decades before Aurelian launched his festival. Hippolytus said Jesus’ birth “took place eight days before the kalends of January,” that is, Dec. 25.

Tighe said there’s evidence that as early as the second and third centuries, Christians sought to fix the birth date to help determine the time of Jesus’ death and resurrection for the liturgical calendarlong before Christmas also became a festival.

Read the rest of his informative post to find out why originally the early Christians had determined that Dec 25th was the date of our Savior’s birth.

With all of the blocking being done to
Summorum Pontificum being done by certain bishops we could only wish they could find this same zeal for other projects. What if these bishops were as effective in blocking the will of the Holy Father and in reality also the previous Holy Father in regards to the TLM as they were to closing down abortion clinics in their diocese?

What if they showed the same concern towards knowing the rubrics of the TLM as they did to the ordinary rite? Is it any wonder some take with more than a grain of salt these new found worries that priests more than adequately know the Mass and to perform it correctly. Now certainly the bishop has a clear role in ensuring his priests have the proper training and that they conform to liturgical regulations, but why exactly is it that there seems to be a rigorist view of this towards the TLM and a Lassie Faire attitude towards the ordinary form of the Mass. Strangely I had the odd idea that the same view should be taken towards all forms of liturgy in the diocese, but maybe that’s just me.