I've got absolutely nothing against the Christmas story. In fact, at my wedding, which took place on July 2nd, when I was asked which Bible passage I wanted read out at our outdoor ceremony I had to admit that the one I loved best might seem a bit strange to guests at a summer wedding...
In spite of that -- or maybe even because of that -- I am completely fascinated by what early Christian historians say about the Christmas story. Was Jesus born in Bethlehem? Highly unlikely. Was he born in December? No mention of any date in the Bible. It may well have been April. Were there three wise men? the Bible doesn't actually say so -- in fact it says almost nothing about these men at all, who could have numbered anything from 2 to (according to one text) several hundred moving together as a small army.
If you enjoy celebrating Christmas (as a Christian, or, in my case, an eclectic pagan ancestor-loving atheist) I really encourage you to have a look at our Christmas interviews which look in a bit more detail at this stuff.
The first interview we did was with Brent Landau, an early Christian historian who knows a lot about the ancient texts from this period (get in touch with him if you need something translated from Syriac, an ancient Christian language related to Aramaic which probably won't feature on Google Translate for a while). His topic was The Real Christmas Story.
My colleague, Alec Ash, meanwhile, spoke to Bruce Forbes about Christmas History more generally. One of the books he chose is called 4000 Years of Christmas -- so I'll let you do the maths on exactly how much Christmas has to do with the birth of Jesus Christ...
Happy Yuletide!
