Of course it seems possible. Everything appears possible to those who already believe.
According to the Gospel of St. Luke, approximately 2,000 years ago Cæsar Augustus commanded that all the world be taxed. In a massive display of dickishness, Cæsar said that in order to pay these taxes and be counted in the census everyone would have to return to their ancestral city. Of course this is absurd. What if someone didn’t know which city was their ancestral city? What if they had great grandparents who were born in different cities, which city would they go to? Exactly how far back does someone go along their ancestral line to determine the correct city? If a husband and wife have different ancestral homes they probably go to the husbands, but what about widows and spinsters? Does the city that counted a young woman when she traveled with her dad get confused when she doesn’t show up the next year because she got married? What about people too old to travel, do they get thrown in jail? Rich people travel with servants. How much trouble does it cause if the servants are forced to go to their master’s tax/census city so they can’t make it to their own? Of even greater concern is the economics of such a venture. If everyone had to take a month off work to go get counted and pay their taxes, that would represent an 8.3% decrease in annual productivity (and therefore tax income). No emperor of Rome was ever that stupid.
Even though this idea is so patently false, we’ll go ahead and indulge it now for the sake of the story. Joseph claimed he was descended from King David so he went to the City of David (Bethlehem). He took along his wife Mary. They’d been married a few months now so Mary was about ready to pop out Sarah’s older brother’s baby (complete with the touch of Holy Spirit). Between the taxes he owed and the huge amount he’d paid to buy Mary from her parents, Joseph just didn’t have enough coin left to pay for a room so he they were spending their nights in a cave outside of town that someone was using to shelter their animals. This worked out pretty well though because when Mary squeezed out Jesus she was able to set him in little manger, chock full of nice clean animal food, to rest between feedings.
That’s right, Jesus had to eat. I don’t know why people don’t ever think about Mary breast feeding. Of course Jesus would suck on her nipples. Seriously people, we don’t want the little guy to starve to death. This is the cool thing about Jesus breast feeding: when Jesus was really little there was a lot of extra magic floating around from his zygotic contact with the “Holy Spirit” so when he was especially content (i.e. breastfeeding) he would glow. He would glow really brightly. In fact, the light was so bright that it attracted all the shepherds working the night shift in the surrounding fields. They came to visit the baby and said, “This baby is clearly wondrous and magical. Surely such a creature is a sign that a time of great peace will shortly be upon us. Praise be to the Lord for allowing us to see such a miraculous thing.”
Then, many years later Christians started celebrating Jesus’ birth during the Winter solstice (probably around the year 354), which is a shame. Jesus was clearly not born in the winter near Jerusalem. Those months are much too wet for shepherds to be out in the hills with their flocks. It’s also pretty lame that the Romans celebrated the solstice on December 25th instead of the 21st. Oh well. At least the Germans were good enough to lend Sinterklaas to the Americans in the 19th century so they could come up with Santa Claus. Yay for Santa!
Merry Christmas Folks. Seriously.
Ref: Luke 2:1-17
Ref: Luke 2:1-17
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