Over the coming weeks in schools, churches, high streets, and venues across this country, the Christmas story that began with Mary and Joseph's journey for a census will be enjoyed and celebrated by millions of people.

But of what story are we a part?

What story do we want to tell about ourselves?

The UK census gives us a particular and important snapshot of the identity of our nation, decade by decade.

Interpreting the story of trends, values, perceptions, and identities that underlies these snapshots is complicated, however.

Some commentators have responded to the census data about religious affiliation released last week by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) by predicting the terminal decline of Christianity in our nation or declaring this as a statistical watershed moment.

I am interested in the overall story that this census snapshot informs. Christians should approach this data with humility, attentiveness, and self-reflection.

Though the most common response to the voluntary question of religious affiliation remains "Christian," there was a 13.1 percentage decrease from 2011 to 2021.

The ONS clarifies that these figures are about "the religion with which [respondents] connect or identify, rather than their beliefs or active religious practice."

I do not find the trend in the responses to this particular question surprising: we have left behind the time when many people almost automatically identified as Christian.

Yet the story of the relationship between the identity expressed on our census forms and our engagement with faith is far from straightforward.

There are fewer people in the pews on a typical Sunday morning than a few decades ago, but at the same time, some of our churches - of all traditions and styles - are growing significantly, and we are also seeing people coming to faith in Jesus Christ, to whom the idea of joining a weekly service would not necessarily occur.

These apparently contrasting statistical snapshots inform a more complicated, though the incomplete story, which is not one of terminal decline for religious faith nor Christianity, but more about how individuals in our ever-changing nation and culture choose to express their identity.

This is a story on which other Christians and I must reflect carefully and humbly.

For Christians, however, the story that defines our identity has never been one of overwhelming numerical growth nor fear of extinction. Amid the complexities of identity, values and nation, Christians strive to live by the story of the Good News of Jesus Christ - a story notable for the absence of success by the world's usual standards.

A watershed moment in that story happened when "Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world." The events that then unfolded will be shared by millions of people in the UK this Christmas.

They will hear the baby Jesus described as a light that shines in the darkness. His story is not a tale of linear success but about how that light shines through the difficult realities of our lives and finally overcomes all darkness. Continue reading

"I wish to encourage the beautiful family tradition of preparing the Nativity scene in the days before Christmas, but also the custom of setting it up in the workplace, in schools, hospitals, prisons and town squares."

"It is my hope that this custom will never be lost and that, wherever it has fallen into disuse, it can be rediscovered and revived,'' the Pope wrote.

He's written, and is directing, a "first-millennium farce about virgins, mules and art". The Madonna's Mule is set in 999 when, just like when Y2K rolled around, citizens believed the world would end when the new millennium began. Continue reading

The pace in an already over-stimulated society quickens. Everyone is trying to get their jobs, their gigs, their projects, finished by Christmas.

Many people bemoan the approach of this festival, complain about its commercialization, wonder why it is still observed in a multicultural, multi-faith country like Australia.

But most people eventually succumb to it, obediently flocking to family hearths on Christmas day. A feast takes place; presents are exchanged.

Children, especially, are honoured with gifts.

Why? Why does Christmas alone retain such a hold on us, while the significance of other festivals in the Christian calendar, such as Easter, has waned so dramatically?

The reason may be that the significance of Christmas is indeed both primal and universal. A child is born.

A unique child, yes, but unique ultimately only in a mythic sense, the sense in which every child is uniquely at the centre of the existential drama.

Christmas remembers and celebrates the primal fact of birth: every human is a born being, and born moreover into a family.

So, once a year, we are pulled by the seemingly irresistible force of Christmas back to our point of origin: family.

Even putting aside the Christian trappings however, one might still object to such a yearly rite of origins on the grounds that it is unfair to those who have "no family." But nobody has no family.

Each of us has a biological mother and father who together tie us into a great tapestry of ancestors, all of whom would care for us if they could. Caring for the child is the innate pattern and purpose of family.

Family is moreover a gift economy: incalculable gifts of love and care are freely bestowed, on the understanding, only, that they will be passed on.

At Christmas we ritualize, with our Christmas presents, the endless chain of gift-giving that sustains the great trans-generational unfolding of family.

Whether the family hearth to which we return on Christmas day is actual or merely symbolic, by returning to it we acknowledge the fact that each of us belongs inalienably and equally to a vast familial story, a story that ramifies out into the wider story of humanity.

Christmas is about belonging, inalienable belonging, the belonging that is literally our birthright. Continue reading

Sources

• ABC Religion & Ethics article by Freya Mathews, Adjunct Professor of Environmental Philosophy at Latrobe University.
• Image: Crossroads Initiative

This week, for instance, the Christmas tree to be displayed in St. Peter's Square arrived at the Vatican.

It's an 82-foot-tall fir tree, cut down on Nov. 13 in a forest outside the small town of Scurelle (13,000 souls) in the northern Italian province of Trento. The Italian army moved it in a helicopter to a staging location, where it was put on a truck for the ride to Rome.

It's already been put up in the square, which is the traditional annual signal that the holidays are upon us.

Also this week, the Basilica of Santa Maria del Popolo launched its 41st annual exhibit of 11 nativity scenes from around the world, while Vatican personnel are working feverishly to prepare the massive nativity scene that each year dominates St. Peter's Square.

During a presentation of the exhibit last Thursday, local schoolchildren performed a "living" nativity scene, while Italian Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, now the head of the Pontifical Academy for Life, was on hand.

(In a touching footnote, the theme of the living scene was "In Amatrice, the bell tower strikes the Holy Night," a tribute to a small Italian town famed for its pasta sauce that was wiped out by an August 24 earthquake.)

The Roman Academy of Arts also held an event for children aged 4 to 11 on "the nativity scene as play," teaching kids how to make their own.

All this offers a reminder of just how central the iconography of Christmas, especially the nativity scene, is to Catholic culture. Herewith, then, three things one can glean about Catholicism from observing the special place that the nativity scene occupies in the Vatican, and in Catholic hearts. Continue reading

• John L. Allen Jr. is the editor of Crux, specialising in coverage of the Vatican and the Catholic Church.

After all, it must be because Left-wing teachers are worried about offending non-Christians.

One in 14 schools apparently doesn't even use the word "Christmas" to describe the end-of-term production, preferring terms such as "Winter Celebration" or "Seasonal Play".

Several of those parents surveyed by Netmums reported seeing pan-religious plays incorporating references to Eid, Hanukkah and Diwali.

But on reflection, it's difficult to get too worked up about the decline of the nativity.

I say this as someone who, until this year, had four children at a Church of England primary school. My 11-year-old daughter's first appearance as a shepherd was at nursery when she was three, so I've had to sit through the traditional Christmas story for eight years now.

Last year I had to go to two separate nativities because I helped set up a free school for four- to 11-year-olds in Hammersmith.

I can honestly say that if I went along to the West London Free School Primary this year and discovered the head had decided to stage a play called "Winterval in Mecca", complete with five-year-old girls in burqas, I'd be pleasantly surprised.

Part of the problem with the traditional nativity is that you know exactly what's going to happen.

I had to watch The Mousetrap for a second time when I was a theatre critic and it drove me half-mad with boredom. Watching the 10th production of the nativity is my idea of hell.

It doesn't help that the performers are usually woefully under-rehearsed.

You can guarantee that at some point Joseph is going to forget his lines, prompting a stressed-out teacher to start hissing from the wings. Props are lost, pieces of scenery tumble into the audience, and the Three Kings often seem to be wandering in the desert for 60 days and 60 nights. Continue reading

Image: The Telegraph

Toby Young is an English journalist. He is best known as the author of How to Lose Friends and Alienate People.

The exhibit is called Picturing Mary: Woman, Mother, Idea, and runs from Dec. 5, 2014 to Apr. 12, 2015. If you are in the Washington, D.C. area, this might be worth a trip.

But even if you can't see the exhibit in person, don't worry. The museum has provided an interactive feature on its website that allows people to view the great pieces of Marian art from the exhibit. The feature also includes helpful descriptions of each work's origins and significance.

See this beautiful tribute to Our Lady here.

Sources

• Catholic Vote
• Image: The Leader

The French court's ban is to preserve France's secular traditions and has sparked a fierce backlash, reports The Guardian.

"Why not ban Christmas and the public holidays that go with it?" screamed Le Parisien; its headline ran "Spare us a nativity war."

The paper claimed 86% of its more than 12,000 readers were in favour of keeping nativity scenes in public places.

The Nantes' court decision came in response from a complaint by secular campaign group, Federation Nationale de la Libre Pensee.

The court ordered the western town of La Roche-sur-Yon to remove the crib from the entrance to its building.

Calling the decision "stupid, blinkered secularism", the council is appealing the decision.

"Next we'll be banning epiphany cakes at the Elysee Palace" local senator, Bruno Retailleau, said in a statement.

The Guardian reports other councils are fighting similar decisions.

The controversy surrounding the ban comes as the French government does not want to be seen to discriminate against only Muslims.

Muslim people are banned from wearing burqas or niqabs in public.

Critics are saying the government is leaning too far in the other way to protect France's secular traditions.

"Secularism must not kill our country, our roots and our traditions," said Nadine Morano, deputy with the centre-right UMP party.

Sociologist Jean Bauberot claims upholding of France's religious "neutrality" is becoming increasingly aggressive and repressive secularism is affecting Islam.

"The anti-Islamic climate is causing a crackdown on other religions," he told Le Nouvel Observateur weekly magazine.

But, he added, the law is the law, and "cribs are a religious symbol that has no place in a public space."

Sources

• The Guardian
• The Telegraph
• Image: The Guardian

According to a Times article in The Australian, the new account suggests there were "scores" of Magi, rather than just the three wise men bearing gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.

The account, which has been in the Vatican archives for 250 years, is translated from ancient Syriac and gives a detailed account of the Magi prayers and rituals.

"Somebody was really fascinated by the wise men to have created this big, long story and tell it from their perspective," said Brent Landau, professor of religious studies at the University of Oklahoma, who spent two years deciphering the fragile manuscript.

"A great deal of thought and imagination has gone into it.

"There are many details of strange rituals, praying and silence. There is a description of a sacred mountain and purification at a sacred spring.

"The detail is so great I wonder if it is the community's actual practices that are being described."

"Nobody knows where Matthew got the story from, so along with Matthew's Gospel this is as close as you can get to the Magi."

The story relates that Seth passed down a prophecy that a star would appear that would signal the birth of God in human form. The Magi waited thousands of years until the day the star appeared.

Professor Landau said: "It transformed into a small luminous human being who was Christ himself in a pre-existent, celestial form.

"It is saying that Jesus Christ and the Star of Bethlehem are the same thing and Jesus Christ can transform himself into anything.

"The star guides them to Bethlehem and into a cave where it transforms into a human infant who tells them to go back and be preachers of the Gospel."

The manuscript is an 8th Century copy of a story first written down nearly half a millennium earlier, less than 100 years after the Gospel of Matthew, the original source of the Bible account.

Matthew's Gospel does not specify the number of Magi.

The manuscript has been in the Vatican library for more than 250 years. Nothing else is known about it.

Source

• The Australian
• Image: Mystagogy

An anonymous German is using Twitter under the name of Joseph of Nazareth and providing a light-hearted commentary on the Christmas story from St Joseph's perspective.

Joseph began Tweeting on 1 December, and has already gained around 9,500 followers and has published over 90 tweets, which are now distributed both in German and English.

Joseph von Nazareth says he is concerned that although most people "have heard the [Christmas] story a thousand times, nobody has ever thought about how Joseph felt about the whole thing."

These tweets attempt to give a modern male's perspective on the events that led to the Nativity and is an attempt to open up the Christmas story to a large section of the population, particularly young men, who might not have have had the opportunity of connecting with it.

The tweets might prove controversial for some, although they do remain tame on the whole - even if they sometimes appear to be too humorous at times.

For example, after finding out that Mary is pregnant, Joseph von Nazareth wrote: "Did not sleep a wink the whole night. I am seriously considering whether I should leave Mary."

Enhancing the social aspect of Twitter, Joseph even asked his male readers whether they had ever experienced a similar situation, namely: "A girlfriend pregnant by another."

Other tweets reveal a sensitive man, deeply in love with Mary - whom he remains devoted to throughout, even after discovering that she was expecting a child that was not his. Before the shock revelation, Joseph is concerned by the fact that she is "a little down" and "stressed and tired".

Source

• Sky News
• Spero News
• Image: Sky News
• Twitter: Joseph of Nazareth