Christmas and the stories we forget

Each December comes a familiar pageant. Shepherds and magi stand shoulder to shoulder, as if Bethlehem had one set of visitors.

A star hovers above a rustic stable as infant Jesus glows with the soft light of "word made flesh."

Carols and nativity scenes weave the birth stories of Matthew and Luke together and wrap them in the poetry of John. The result is beautiful, but the blending sometimes blurs the distinctive notes each Gospel is trying to strike.

This isn’t a complaint about tradition. Every tradition condenses diverse sources into a single picture. But when the differences fade, the breadth of what Christmas wants to say can shrink.

Allowing each Gospel to speak for itself does not dilute the season’s meaning; it expands it. It reminds us that Christmas is not one tale repeated four times, but a set of quite different perspectives on how God meets the world.

Luke gives us the most familiar narrative: a young couple displaced by an imperial decree, a birth in makeshift accommodation, and shepherds who become unlikely heralds.

Luke’s story is tender and earthy, but also socially radical. His point is clear: God’s good news begins on the margins. Hope does not trickle down from the powerful; it rises from overlooked places.

When Luke’s contribution is folded into a harmonised Christmas, the sharpness of that claim can soften. The shepherds become merely atmospheric; their significance as the first recipients of divine good news can be missed.

Matthew, meanwhile, gives us a quieter but more unsettling drama. There is no stable and no shepherds. Instead, strangers from a far-off land arrive bearing gifts, while a paranoid ruler responds to rumours of a newborn rival with violence.

Here Christmas is not simply comforting. It reveals the clash between fragile power and vulnerable holiness. It reminds us that the arrival of hope often exposes the world’s darker reflexes — fear, insecurity, the instinct to use power to protect privilege.

Harmonising Matthew into a single nativity sometimes blunts his message: that Christmas unfolds in a dangerous world where families flee at night.

John begins somewhere else entirely. He offers no nativity at all but opens with a sweeping vision: "In the beginning was the Word."

John invites us to step back from the scenery and contemplate the deep structure of reality. For him, Christmas is the moment when the heartbeat behind the universe becomes audible. The light enters the darkness, not by overwhelming it, but by living within it.

When John’s prologue is absorbed into the larger composite Christmas, it can fade into abstraction. Its daring claim that the world is meaningful, relational, and lit by divine generosity can become background music.

And then there is Mark, the Gospel Christmas usually forgets. He offers no birth story, no shepherds or magi, no Bethlehem. His "beginning of the good news" is an adult Jesus stepping out of obscurity, baptised, tested, and then immediately at work healing, confronting injustice, restoring people to themselves.

Mark is impatient; his favourite word is "immediately." For him, the significance of Jesus lies not in how he arrived but in what he did. Through Mark’s eyes, Christmas is less about origins and more about impact—hope erupting into ordinary life with unsettling force.

Including Mark in our Christmas imagination shifts the season from nostalgia to possibility. It asks not only "What happened then?" but "What is happening now?" Where is that same life-giving energy at work today—in acts of compassion, in courageous truth-telling, in quiet persistence against despair? Mark pulls Christmas out of the stable and into the streets.

Letting these four voices be themselves enriches rather than fragments the season. Together they tell us that Christmas is many things at once: tenderness and disruption, vulnerability and courage, mystery and earthiness.

It speaks to those who feel fearful, marginalised or overwhelmed, and to those yearning for justice. For a world always wrestling with uncertainty and division, perhaps the gift of Christmas is not a single harmonised story but a chorus of them.

Each Gospel offers a distinctive angle on hope, broadening our vision: hope born among the poor, hope that unsettles injustice, hope that illuminates existence itself, and hope that continues to break in, urgently and unexpectedly, here and now.

That, surely, is good news worth hearing again.

• Graham Redding is the Douglas Goodfellow Lecturer in Chaplaincy Studies, University of Otago.