A Case Against the Holiday Baby

The human baby is an unbelievable thing to behold. So vulnerable, yet intricately fine tuned to a level of perfection we call trivial. As I write this, the festive season is in full swing, and the focus is on one particular baby; the Holiday baby.

A sense of elation permeates all of culture, it seems. There are lights, decorations, gifts, and peculiar music. Common courtesy is up and smiles are easy to come by. Why?…

To celebrate the birth of a destitute middle eastern baby over two thousand years ago… A baby who has inspired emotional responses like no other. The subject of more literature and art than any human in the history of the world. A baby born of a lineage with dirt under the fingernails, containing prostitutes, murderers and adulterers.

Don't be fooled. The baby so whimsically depicted this time of the year, really did exist. Only our over saturation with epic narratives, special effects and mystical themes allows us, with some academic laziness, to call such corroborated historical facts - fiction, with the same ease as we would the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The question can never be about his existence. The real question is about the baby's relevance, for us today. His exaltation in our sophisticated and tolerant society.

I find myself perplexed at the acceptance, we as an evolved culture have towards this baby. For he grew up to be a man whose scandalous words were spiced with some of the highest intolerance ever uttered.

He would tell his audience to love and pray for their enemies, but turn around and proclaim himself a king bringing division to all the earth. He would call the persecuted blessed. He said that to be great, one must become a servant, yet he would call all to follow him and waste their own lives in order to gain a new unseen life.

He called himself "the way, the truth and the life" and promised his followers that he would literally indwell them. He stated that no man comes unto the father, but by him and demanded that all mankind be devoted to one another, but also to this unseen father in some far dimension.

This sweet little baby grew up to become a man; historically undeniable, politically unpredictable and socially unacceptable. He went as far as taking credit for that "fine tuned perfection" found in every baby ever born, when he said: "I and the father are one." The so called Prince of Peace told us to drink his blood and eat his flesh to be cleansed of wrongdoing, yet he said his burden was light. 

What did he mean by these divisive statements?...

I've always delighted in this special time of the year, for reasons surely left over from my childhood, when so many wholesome memories were made. But as I grew older and searched for the kind of significance that decorated trees, gifts and treats can't provide, I stumbled upon more than I could chew...


Can we not achieve happiness and fulfilment by our own means? Are we not responsible for our destinies? Do we not control our own fates? Doesn't our technology, knowledge and power explain away such supernatural babble? Why should we tolerate songs, displays and language which raise this baby above all creation, in our schools, department stores and airwaves? Should we, in this day and age, even accept these outlandish claims? No. We should not...

Unless, of course, they are all true. 

Merry Christmas.