The Age Online

Home   >   Opinion   >   Article

The folly of forgetting miracles at Christmas

December 25, 2003

Printer friendly version Print this article
Email to a friend Email to a friend

The spirit of the season lies in going beyond everyday wisdom, writes Christopher Bantick.

Every year when Santa Claus comes down the chimney and through the grille on the gas fire, a miracle happens. My son, until this year, has accepted this without question. He is now, through a process of rational deduction, doubting the possibility that this could be so.

He has arrived, through experience and observation, at the position held by the 18th-century philosopher David Hume. This being, so Hume argued, that it is unreasonable to believe that any miracle has occurred. But my son is also facing a problem. Explain Santa away and there is a yawning gap. He is reluctant to put his parents there.

Christmas is in its most traditional sense a Christian festival. It hinges on the acceptance of a miracle. This being the virgin birth. Christ was both conceived, miraculously, and born, miraculously, of a virgin. But as Stephen Law - philosopher at University College London and author of The Christmas Files: The Philosophy of Christmas - asks: "How reasonable is it to suppose that that this miracle really took place?"

It is not something that can be readily explained as Mary and Joseph, Christ's surrogate parents, left no personal records. We have, as philosopher Thomas Paine said, "hearsay only". Hume's argument appears all the stronger.

If we knew of someone who was pregnant and said that she was still a virgin, then the chances are we would doubt this claim. We would say that this was unreasonable. Perhaps even more so if they claimed that God had visited them and they were with child. But this is exactly what Mary claimed. At Christmas, are we to dispose of reason and accept a miracle that has questionable evidence at best to support it?

As much as the virgin birth may be unacceptable on rational grounds to some, and laughable to others, miracles do happen in religions. They are a way of explaining what cannot be simply explained and offer evidence that some divine power or deity has acted in circumstances beyond our control.

Muslims for example believe that Muhammad escaped from Mecca to Jerusalem, Hindus accept that Krishna was resurrected after death and Christians believe Jesus born of a virgin, was the Son of God. But if we are caught up at Christmas on accepting the virgin birth as a miracle, it is worth remembering that this was not a one-off in history.

There was, at the time the Gospels were written, a pagan tradition of attributing virgin births to heroes. Plato's biographer, Diogenes Laertius, so Stephen Law notes in his book, "suggested that Plato was both divinely conceived and born of a virgin".

The point about Christmas is that if it is celebrated without an observance of the miraculous, then it has uncertain meaning. It is like going to a party eating and drinking merrily without ever asking who invited us and why was the party being held in the first place. If you take the miraculous out of Christmas then what do you replace it with and still maintain meaning?

T. S. Eliot in his magisterial poem, Journey of the Magi, wrestled with the insistent reality of the virgin birth. Three travel-weary wise men journey and mutter that "this was all folly" and yet, they are changed. They come away with one saying:

"I had seen birth and death
But had thought they were different; this Birth was."

The trust a small child will show sitting on Santa's knee in any shopping centre, reminds us that miracles to children are real. Santa can be everywhere and yet personally engaging with a single child at a moment of time. Parents replace Santa and children come to accept this. Accepting the Christmas miracle is more problematical. It comes down to proof.

If we deny the virgin birth on the basis of evidence, then what else gives credibility to Christmas? And perhaps more pointedly, do we not owe it to our children to tell the Christmas story, with its miracle, and let them make up their own minds?

The churches today have largely failed in this message and responsibility. Widespread public suspicion over allegations of child sexual abuse have mortally damaged the institutionalised churches' spiritual authority. We don't listen any more. Then the rampant commercialism of Christmas has another message altogether. Both churches and retailers tell very different Christmas stories. The result is confusion.

If we accept Hume's arguments that miracles do not happen and it is unreasonable to believe that they do, then Christmas is bearable. But what nags is the sense that something miraculous did happen in a stable at Bethlehem. Eliot's three Magi, men not noted for their gullibility, discovered their folly lay in their initial disbelief.

Christopher Bantick is a Melbourne writer.



Latest news by email
Get free news emails from The Age
Sign Up Now!