As a Christian I loved the Christmas story. With its singing angels and divine guidance; it’s a child-friendly story with an almost magical captivation.
I still enjoy Christmas, but in a very different way, I like the decoration filled house, and the cards from friends and seeing family and the extended days off work. But the Christmas story? Well it’s nonsense isn’t it?
I don’t think I ever critically analysed the Christmas story as a Christian. I accepted it as literally true because it was in the bible and I was a Christian so I had to believe it. Why should I ever question it? My exit from Christianity didn’t really involve that part of the bible so in my questioning of what I believed, those chapters and verses didn’t play a significant role.
What has intrigued me about the story in later years is that every Christmas, at least it seems that way, there is a fresh barrage of proposals for what might be the Christmas star, as if that’s the most serious objection to the narrative. Over the years I’m sure I’ve heard every single variation of celestial event being credited as a possibility. Nova, comet, conjunction, you name it, it’s been suggested. However, no one has ever answered how some travellers arriving at a town would be able to identify a specific property from a ‘star’ that is in the sky. If I step outside my house on a clear night and look up and pick a star that looks like it’s above my house and then go to the other end of town, that same ‘star’ will be above whichever house I choose to stand outside. I would also not be able to navigate back to my house using that star as my navigation aide. How on earth did those wise men manage it?
This is fatal to believing the guiding star element of the Christmas story. Well it should be. Yet every year a new swathe of Christian commentary proposes some natural event that could have been the ‘star’ and each one forgets to explain that last point. Is that bit not important? Of course it is, but it can only happen if there is some supernatural assistance of some description, in which case why even bother with the pretence of invoking a natural event? Just say God guided them using a supernatural light that only they could see. of course that doesn’t help the narrative because for something like God being born on earth, something big needs to accompany it, and you don’t get bigger or more glorious than a guiding star! So the modern day Christian is caught in a trap created by an ancient myth.
The problems don’t stop there either. The reported census doesn’t match the required time slot, it happened ten years after King Herod died, and there never was a requirement to travel to an ancestors’ town anyway. The narrative needs to get Jesus born in Bethlehem and so this is made up in order to get him there, nothing more. King Herod didn’t kill all those baby boys. Mary and Joseph didn’t travel to Egypt. One account says Jesus was presented at the temple in Jerusalem after Mary’s 40 days of uncleanliness, another says Jesus was a young child still in Bethlehem for the wise men to visit, what happened to the home they travelled from? The gaps and inconsistencies are more blatant than a Hollywood action flick.
Back to the wise men, does anyone else find it odd that the wise men came from an entirely different land? Why could it not be fellow Jews? No doubt there’s an apologetic that says it’s to show just that Jesus was King of the World not just King of the Jews, or something. This is what’s called retrospective interpretation, probably the least honest of the apologetics strategies.
The Christmas story makes no sense and it should not be believed as an historical event. It’s a myth, let’s keep it that way.
I love Christmas, and I love it even more without the unbelievable mishmash of nonsense that Christianity tries to turn it into.
Confessions Of A YEC - Featuring Still Unbelievable! 
I believed the Christmas story — until I learned that Santa was fake. After that, I wasn’t so sure of anything.
The guiding star never made sense to me. The apparent motion of stars is mainly due to the rotation of the earth, so cannot guide to a location on earth. I don’t think I particularly questioned other parts. But I was taking it as a traditional story whose truth did not matter.
Once I started actually reading the bible, the genealogies of Jesus became a problem. If this was a virgin birth, why was it being traced through Joseph?
Yes, you are right. There’s so much that does not make sense. Best to take it as a made up story with at most a tenuous connection to history.
When I read comments like yours, where you say certain elements never made sense, and you’re definitely not alone in saying that. I always ask myself, ‘how did I never question them?’. It’s obvious when looking at the bigger picture that this narrative is not cohesive, yet millions accept it unquestioningly and I was one of them.
In some ways I find that embarrassing.
I think it’s because of my upbringing, growing up in such a literalist culture with almost zero exposure to critical thinking. I think the very idea of questioning the authenticity of the story must have been seen as a bad thing. I can’t explain it any other way.