Produced by Jared Fuller
A.D. I. and MDCCCLV.
A Christmas Story for MDCCCLVI.
By Theodore Parker,
Minister of the 28th Congregational Society of Boston.
Two Christmas Celebrations.
A great many years ago, Augustus Caesar, then Emperor of Rome, orderedhis mighty realm to be taxed; and so, in Judea, it is said, men wentto the towns where their families belonged, to be registered forassessment. From Nazareth, a little town in the north of Judea, toBethlehem, another little but more famous town in the south, there wentone Joseph, the carpenter, and his wife Mary,—obscure and poor people,both of them, as the story goes. At Bethlehem they lodged in a stable;for there were many persons in the town, and the tavern was full. Thenand there a little boy was born, the son of this Joseph and Mary; theynamed him JEHOSHUA, a common Hebrew name, which we commonly call Joshua;but, in his case, we pronounce it JESUS. They laid him in the crib ofthe cattle, which was his first cradle. That was the first Christmas,kept thus in a barn, 1856 years ago. Nobody knows the day or the month;nay, the year itself is not certain.
After a while the parents went home to Nazareth, where they had othersons,—James, Joses, Simon, and Judas,—and daughters also;nobody knows how many. There the boy JESUS grew up, and it seemsfollowed the calling of his father; it is said, in special, that he madeyokes, ploughs, and other farm-tools. Little is known about his earlylife and means of education. His outside advantages were, no doubt,small and poor; but he learned to read and write, and it seems becamefamiliar with the chief religious books of his nation, which are stillpreserved in the Old Testament.
At that time there were three languages used in Judea, beside theLatin, which was confined to a few officials: 1. The Syro-Chaldaic,—thelanguage of business and daily life, the spoken language of the commonpeople. 2. The Greek,—the language of the courts of justice andofficial documents; the spoken and written language of the foreigntraders, the aristocracy, and most of the more cultivated people in thegreat towns. 3. The old Hebrew,—the written and spoken language of thelearned, of theological schools, of the priests; the language of the OldTestament. It seems Jesus understood all three.
At that time the thinking people had outgrown the old forms of religion,inherited from their fathers, just as a little girl becomes too stoutand tall for the clothes which once fitted her babyhood; or as thepeople of New England have now become too rich and refined to live inthe rough log-cabins, and to wear the coarse, uncomfortable clothes,which were the best that could be got two hundred years ago. For mankindcontinually grows wiser and better,—and so the old forms of religionare always getting passed by; and the religious doctrines and ceremoniesof a rude age cannot satisfy the people of an enlightened age, any morethan the wigwams of the Pequod Indians in 1656 would satisfy the whitegentlemen and ladies of Boston and Worcester in 1856. The same thinghappens with the clothes, the tools, and the laws of all advancingnations. The human race is at school, and learns through one book afteranother,—going up to higher and higher studies continually. But at thattime cultivated men had outgrown their old forms of religion,—much ofthe doctrine, many of the ceremonies; and yet they did not quite dare tobreak away from them,—at least in public. So there was a great deal ofpretended belief, and of secret denia