The "Gold, Frankincense and Many Doubts: Part II" Story

Foreword:  Christmas will be here soon.  How do I know?  Just look around you at all the lights, ornaments and 1/2 price sale signs in windows of stores and businesses.  I've been looking at them for at least a month now.  Starts earlier every year.  Black Friday isn't what it used to be.  Commercialism of Christmas is everywhere.  Happy Holidays signs greet us instead of Merry Christmas.  Santa's appear on roofs of those who have no idea why we celebrate Christmas.  Sad, isn't it?  Why can't we just celebrate Christmas as it was meant to be celebrated; as a simple birthday party for baby Jesus.  Well, for one reason, money rules!  Lucky it only comes once a year.

It was an ordinary day.  Just reading in the paper about a few live outdoor manger scenes in Lancaster County.  All are sponsored by churches with their parishioners playing the parts associated with the manger scene.  All are probably interpretations of Jesus' birth with the baby Jesus in the manger sitting near farm animals in a stable.  Yeah, in Lancaster County I'll bet the animals are real also.  Wow, I can't imagine standing outside in the cold for a few hours while portraying Mary or Joseph.  You really think Jesus was born in Bethlehem on December 25 where the winter month of December has average highs of 14 degrees and average lows of 7 degrees. That poor donkey!  Could the real Mary, Joseph and Baby Jesus survive in a manger at the rear of an inn?  Makes you think.  But, it is tradition to celebrate the birth of the Christ Child on December 25th and we all need security with religious dates to make it easier to believe in them.  In a Lancaster newspaper article I read last year around this time of the year titled "When was Jesus Christ born?", Helen Colwell Adams writes about all the "ifs" of December 25.  I found it very interesting so I read more on the subject and will give you some of my interpretations.  The argument for a winter Christmas starts around the 4th century when historians and theologians were celebrating a winter Christmas, but it wasn't until 525 that the year of Jesus' birth was fixed.  That was when Dionysius Exiguus determined Jesus was born 8 days before a New year's day in the year 1 A.D.  Was he right?  Others say that "The Star of Bethlehem" was a comet in 5 B.C. and therefore Jesus was probably born at that time.  Herod the Great is assumed to have died in the spring of 4 B.C. and was alive when Jesus was born, so 4 B.C. is unlikely.  Jesus was also said to have been born two years before King Herod died in the spring of 4 B.C. Taking all this info into account, scholars say that Jesus was born between March 9 and May 4, 5 B.C.  Then other scholars say that Herod died in 3 B.C.  And yet, Luke tells us that Jesus was about 30 years of age when he began his ministry in 29 A.D.  Back up those 30 years and you get 1 B.C.  Right?  Not really because there is no zero year so it would be 2 B.C.  Most early Christian sources do suggest 3 B.C. to 2 B.C. as a reasonable time for his birth.  John the Baptist was said to have been born half a year before Jesus was born and it is said that John was born in the spring of 4 B.C. and Jesus in September of 4 B.C.  Are we really living in 2013 A.D. or 2017 A.D.?  And, how could Jesus have been born in a year with a B.C.?  Doesn't that mean before Christ?  History is hard to determine, but does that really matter anyway.  Many Protestants and Catholics alike become quite emotional when you try to dispel the fact that December 25 is not the true date of Christmas.  I must say, I'm one of them!  So there!  Merry Christmas.  And, I'll see you in church on Christmas Eve, December 24th!  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.