BATTLE OF THE NATIVITY

 

I am tempted to call it a primeval struggle, drenched in antiquity and destined to feed future conflict until judgment day, whenever the heck that may  be. Except it was much simpler than that. The day after Christmas 2007, two rival gangs, "The Jets" (AKA the Greek Orthodox Priests), and "The Sharks" (AKA the Armenian Apostolic Priests) got into a turf dispute inside the Church of the Nativity, the traditional birth place of the Prince of Peace in Bethlehem, Israel, Palestinian Territories. And mostly I blame the long dead French Emperor Napoleon III for most of this mess.

First, a word about all that antiquity – it does not appear to have happened where or when everybody now thinks it did - assuming it happened at all. Roman census or no census, there was no reason for a pregnant Mary to be making a 90 mile donkey ride from Nazareth, on the Galilee plain of northern Israel, to Bethlehem in the mountains just south of Jerusalem, in the west center of Israel.

Being the man, Joseph was expected and qualified to speak for his entire family. He would have been the only one required to travel. But why require anybody to travel? The Romans census takers counted people where they were. That would be where their property was, and where their money was. Why disrupt business all across a rebellious province, in the name of counting people where they were not? It makes no sense.

And there is another problem, an archaeological problem. There is no archeology in Bethlehem from that period. The ground under today's Bethlehem contains Iron Age artifacts and Byzantine artifacts, but nothing in between, nothing from the age of Jesus. The village outside of Jerusalem did not exist on the night that Jesus was born.

However, there was another Bethlehem, “Bethlehem Ha Galilit”, Bethlehem of Galilee, just about 7 miles to the west of Nazareth. It seems far more likely - I am tempted to say logical -  that Jesus of Nazareth was born in Bethlehem Ha Galilit, than in Bethlehem Judea. But because Bethlehem Ha Galilit no longer existed in the fourth century of the common era, when the Byzantine Christians came looking for Jesus' birthplace, they picked the wrong Bethlehem.

So did the followers of Islam, when they first captured the region in year 627 of the common era.  After all, Jesus is one of their prophets, too. But after that little mix up, things got really complicated.

See, after the Crusaders were driven out of the Holy Land in 1187 the Muslim rulers were willing to protect the Christian holy sites, and, of course, tax them. But they did not trust the Roman Catholic Crusaders who had invaded them and now made up a majority of Bethlehem Judea’s population.  So the Muslim rulers split control of the profitable tourist sites in Bethlehem Judea between the Greek and Armenian Orthodox churches, in particular, ownership  of the church built upon the “traditional” site of the birth of Jesus. 

The Greek Orthodox were given control of one part of the building, the Armenian Orthodox control of another part. This allowed the Muslims rulers to play the two Christian sects one against the other, and to play them both off the Roman Catholics, who were now the poor relations in town.

And thus some calm was achieved in a region not famous for calm, at least until 1852, when a “firman” (or edict) was issued by Abdulmecit I, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and Caliph of the Muslim World (above). Abdulmecit issued his edict because…

...well, because first, in 1847,  some thug stole the silver star which marked the “traditional” spot of Jesus’ birth, in the floor of the Church of the Nativity in  Bethlehem Judea.  

And, more importantly, because the Sultan was weak and because Louis Napoleon III of France was a pompous political hack, who believed that he had been chosen by God to fix, first France, and then rest of the world, by making it more French.

Louis Napoleon III (above) was elected to a ten year term as the first President of the Second Republic of France in December of 1848. He immediately started plotting to follow in his uncle’s imperial boot prints. 

By early in 1852 Louis had helped to restore the Vatican’s independence in Italy (which pleased French Catholic voters), but he had also insisted that the new Papal government be drawn up along “liberal” lines, to placate the liberal (meaning non-Catholic) French voters. But no Church ever likes to be lectured about liberal policies from secular politicians. Try it some time and see.

In an attempt to placate the now angry French Catholic voters, Napoleon III suggested that the theft of the star from the Church of the Nativity (five years earlier) proved that the Church of the Nativity was no longer “safe”, and control should be handed over to the Roman Catholic Church for protection - yet another politician declaring a crises which needed his genius to solve. 

This particular crises pleased Pope Pius IX. (above, center), who had come to the conclusion that Czar Nicholas I of Russia was intent upon wiping out Catholicism in his country - which Nicholas was, the Czar being the head of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Napoleon's demand also pleased Abdulmecit I (above), because Albdulmecit had the distinct feeling that Czar Nicholas was about to invade Turkey - which he was. 

So, under Abdulmecit's edict, the keys to tiny "door of humility" the Church of the Nativity were now handed over the priests of the Roman Catholic Church. 

They would unlock the door every day so the Greek and Armenian Orthodox priests could enter the building, and then lock them out every every night.   At the same time the edict also required the Vatican to maintain the church of the Nativity “in statu quo res errant”, or, “as it was before”. 

This edict is linguistically important because it popularization the Latin phrase “status quo”, so that it became a regular part of the English language and is used by people who never heard about any of this stuff.

Now, while growing up Russian Czar Nicholas I (above) had been told that Russia was a military superpower and protector of the true faith, that faith being Russian Orthodoxy. And Nicholas was not about to allow a mere “politician”, least of all a trumped up “Bonaparte”, to usurp his regal and holy authority. 

Nicholas demanded the keys to the Church of the Nativity be returned to the Armenian and Greek priests, who would, he was certain, be controlled by him. And when the keys were not handed over,  he declared war on Turkey. He had - of course - been planning on doing that anyway.  Britain and France then came to Turkey’s defense. And thus we come to the Crimean War, 1853 to 1856. 

And so Napoleon's gambit to impress French Catholic voters led directly to 118,000 dead; of whom 20, 000 were French, and 73,000 were Russian.  And, as part of the peace treaty that ended that war, the keys to the Church of the Nativity were returned to the Greek and Armenian priests, to share.  Which is where they had started.

In his rise to power Napoleon III (above) had shamelessly played one political faction off another, and eventually abolished democracy in his own nation, created a throne for himself, and invaded Algeria and Vietnam and made them colonies - both of which actions came back to haunt France a century later. 

Finally, in 1870, Napoleon was goaded into the Franco-Prussian War,  which resulted in his humiliating defeat, the creation of a unified Germany,  and Napoleon's own overthrow and his death. This guy was the Donald Trump of 19th century French diplomacy.

The Crimean War also cost Czar Nicholas I his life. While on campaign against Turkey he caught a chill and died of pneumonia on 2 March, 1855. And that postponed Russia's rise as a superpower, until the 20th century. The Ottoman Sultan, Abdülmecit, lived long enough to see his nation plunged into debt by that same war.  By the time Abdulmecit's died of tuberculosis in 1861, Turkey was flat broke. His successor was dethroned.

Amazingly, the same war left Pope Pius IX (above) alive but very frustrated. 

Because France had been distracted by the Crimean War, they offered no assistance when, in 1860, Victor Emmanuel took control of Italy from the Catholic Church and established the modern semi-secular nation of Italy, leaving Vatican City as a tiny fig leaf to placate the Pope's ego.    

But Pius achieved a measure of revenge when, in 1869 he issued the decree of Papal Infallibility and declared the dogma of Immaculate Conception. Together these meant that Mary, mother of Jesus, was born without sin because the Pope said she was without sin. And the Pope was never wrong, because he said he was never wrong. These are not ancient concepts, but industrial age justifications to make up for recent political humiliations.

Neither of these were official Roman Catholic dogma until 1869, but it has been church dogma ever since. Only two American Presidents have claimed a similar divinity. One was  Richard Nixon, and he was forced to resign, and Donald Trump. So, claiming divinity seems to only work for religious leaders.

But, let us finally return to the Church of the Nativity on 27 December, 2007. According to the Associated Press; “....dozens of priests and cleaners came to the fortress-like church to scrub and sweep the floors, walls and rafters ahead of the Armenian and Orthodox Christmas, celebrated in the first week of January...  

"But the clean-up turned ugly after some of the {Greek) Orthodox faithful stepped inside the Armenian church's section, touching off a scuffle between about 50 Greek Orthodox and 30 Armenians. Palestinian police, armed with batons and shields, quickly formed a human cordon to separate the two sides so the cleaning could continue...Four people, some with blood running from their faces, were slightly injured.”

Traditionally both the Greek and Armenian Orthodox churches have recruited their priests for this sacred post in the Church of the Nativity, from tiny isolated villages scattered across Greece and the Armenia, where Christians (and Muslims) have been slaughtering each other for a thousand years.

These niave young men now suddenly found themselves working in intimate contact and sharing the most precious artifacts of their faith with heretics. Nothing in their lives or their training prepared them for any kind of peaceful coexistence. Politics may make you a jackass, but religion stands a stronger chance of encouraging you to kill somebody .

And the whole thing was Louis Napoleon III’s idea.  But try explaining that to a bunch of uneducated foreigners.

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TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS

 

I have two favorite Christmas carols; the haunting Carol of the Bells, composed in 1904 by Ukrainian Mykola Leontovych, and the seemingly nonsensical Twelve Days of Christmas, which is old enough that we have no idea who composed it. In fact, the Twelve Days of Christmas might even predate Christianity in France, where the song originated. 

And that makes this English carol more interesting - to me, anyway – because it speaks to the evolution of the holiday. Remember, it wasn't until 137 years after the death of Jesus, give or take a couple of years, that the Bishop of Rome ordered a “Christesmaesse” - Christ's Mass -  to celebrate Jesus' birth on the 25th of December - the winter solstice, after which the hours of daylight get 60 seconds longer each day.   

You see, the twelve disciples did not celebrate Christmas, partly because they were Jewish, but mostly because until fairly recently anything from 60 to 80% of infants died within hours of their birth.

Nobody celebrated their birth day, not even Pope Julius I (above), who around 345 A.D. picked December 25^th as Jesus' birth day.  For all humans, even for the Messiah, life did not officially begin until their epiphany, (meaning the public display of the new child), which was not done until you were pretty sure the child was going to live at least for a year or so. And Jesus' epiphany is celebrated in the Catholic church 12 days after Christmas. Or, maybe Jesus was actually born on 6 December - 12 days before 25 December - which is Saint Nicholas's day.... If you think about it too much, this holiday can become very confusing.  So let's stick to the song.

This English Christmas Carol began as a  midwinter festival “memories and forfeits game”, a sort of musical chairs in a world without very many chairs. 

We know the game began in France because the Red-legged (or French) partridge (above), widespread in medieval Europe, commonly perches in trees, unlike the the English (or grey) partridges which, while common today, were not introduced to England until the 18^th century, and they prefer nesting on ledges or cliffs. And in all three medieval French versions of the song that we know of, and all surviving English versions, “a partridge in a pear tree” is the first and final present always received by the lead singer. So it all started in France with Red-legged partridges.

In the game the leader sings a verse, and each participant repeats what they have just heard, and everybody then takes a drink of wine or mead. Then the leader sings another verse, adding an item, the players repeat, and then everybody drinks again. The rounds we have inherited begin “On the first day of Christmas, my true love gives to me, a partridge in a pear tree.  On second day of Christmas, my true love gives to me, two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree.”

The game continues (with variations) to three French Hens, four colly birds, five gold rings, six geese a-laying, seven swans a-swimming, eight maids a-milking, nine ladies dancing, ten lords a-leaping, eleven pipers pipping, and twelve drummers drumming. A player who forgets an item is eliminated and forced to offer a kiss to the leader, or eat a less than appealing food item. The game would continue until all 12 verses were done, or all the players but one had been eliminated because they were too drunk to remember their own names, let alone how many maids were milking. Sound familiar?  How many bottles of beer do you have on your wall?

And yes, the line is “four colly birds”, as in a colliery, meaning a coal pit or a mine. The birds referred to were as black as coal – the common European black bird. When this song was translated into English, crows and ravens were large enough to only be referred to as fowl.

But the 4 ½ ounce Turdus merula (the black thrush) (above), was small enough to be called a bird . In the winter black birds were easy to attract with seed and easy to catch with a net, and they were a common part of the diet. Peasants sang about “four and twenty black birds baked in a pie”, and they meant these cute little guys. It is a reminder that there are huge chunks of our culture based on now forgotten starvation times repeatedly suffered in each life time. And “break fasts,” like the midwinter festival, were fond memories, which Christianity adopted and adapted to.

In fact, birds play a major role in this song, as if the leader was scanning the banquet table for the next noun to use in the next verse. The partridge is followed by turtle doves, French hens, the Colly birds, geese and swans. The five gold rings seem out of place unless they refer to the ring-necked pheasant, the male of which (above) has a golden brown plumage and a white ring around his neck. There would have been such a bird on any well stocked pheasants midwinter festival table, along with all that other bird protein

There would also have been cheese (made from milk), and about the room, men and women dancing - but not in pairs, that would not become common until the 10^th century. And of course there would be musicians accompanying the song-game with the world's oldest instruments, a flute (or a pipe) and a drum. Music was as vital a part of pagan religious and social celebrations, as they are of Christian services.

And that brings up the recent myth that this game was used to preserve Catholicism in a hostile Protestant England. That might be true, except there is not even of hint of that story until 1979. However, the success of this myth across the Internet since then, does offer an insight into the methodology Christianity used to snatch Christmas from the happy pagans getting drunk at their winter solstice break fast. 

I am not suggesting a conspiracy, but rather a well meaning application of religiously influenced logic. That is also probably how Mithra over came Apollo, and how Jupiter conquered Zeus. It would be wise for all born again Christian evangelicals to remember that religious practices never really die, they just become adopted and adapted.  That has nothing to do with the validity of any belief. It just means humans have always wanted to believe.

The same can be said about a certain odd mathematical aspect of the carol. If you add up all the gifts – 1 partridge, 2 turtle doves and 1 partridge, 3 French hens, 2 turtle doves and 1 partridge, etc., etc. – they add up to 364 gifts in total. It seems there ought to be some connection between the gifts and the length of the year. 

The only problem is a year is 365 ¼ days long, not 364, and that time length has been well known since, well, since forever. And while it seems the number of gifts, like some sort of Christmas carol kabbalah, ought to mean something, it really doesn't. And that seems to me to be the difference between religion and science. In religion the possibility of meaning is the meaning, while in science the possibility is theory and subject to testing. 

Religion gave us Michelangelo's "David". Science gave us a modern infant mortality rate in industrial nations of less then 1% and thus, birthdays.

Which brings us to the Christmas Price Index, created in 1984 by the chief economist for PNC Financial Services Group, of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as “a humorous commodity price index to measure the changing cost of goods over time” using the price of the gifts in The Twelve Days of Christmas as a measure. 

Each year in late November, PNC analysts consult with the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden and the National Aviary in Philadelphia to price most of the birds in the song. However, for some reason, rather than a European black bird, PNC uses the price of a canary at Petco.

Gordon Jewelers, a division of Zale Corporation out of Irving, Texas, prices five gold rings for the Index, even tho, as I said earlier, the gift probably refereed to was the ring-necked pheasants. The maids-a-milking are assumed to be earning federal minimum wage. 

And the Philadelphia Dance Company and their Ballet Company provide the cost of leaping and dancing ladies and lords. The Pennsylvania Musicians Union provides the cost of the drummers and pipers. 

And the fruit tree has by tradition priced by Waterloo Gardens, an upscale Philadelphia plant nursery catering to the local top 1% of green thumbs.

In 2024, thanks to inflation the total price jumped to $49,263.47, a one year increase of 5.4%! The partridge and the pair tree together cost $370.18 - up 16% over last year.  The price of the turtle doves remained steady at $750.00.  The trio of French Hens cost  $364.50,  an increase of 5%.  

The 4 Colling birds (actually Petco canaries) also remained steady for the second year in a row at $599.96.  The five gold rings also remained stable, at $1,245.00.   The price for 6 geese a-laying - at  $900.00 - was up 15.4%, while  the 7 swans - at $13,125.00 - was unchanged. The 8 maids a milking -  at just  $58.00  -  has remained flat since 2009 - which says something very depressing about women and the minimum wage. 

The price of 9 ladies dancing was up 15.8% at $37,557.47,  ten lords a leaping cost $15,579.65 , an increase of 7.2%.  The musicians for wind instruments and the percussionists were both up 15.8% at $3,714.96 and $4,016.85.  

PNC admits they use the index to “engage clients”, which means they are trying to entertain bankers, a profession not known for their humor or their humility. But, PNC also admits this annual nonsense economic measure has become “one of PNC’s most popular and anticipated economic reports.” I suspect that is in large part because it is “filler” used by media types to add a Christmas hint to their newscasts.  

However, there may be hidden a more significant meaning, if  you care to look.  In June of 2012, after 70 years in business, the “nationally renowned Waterloo Gardens” went bankrupt. It seems after the "Great Recession",  even the 1% were tightening their belts, which means their gardeners were beginning to starve. And that was in 2012, before the minimum wage was stuck for another 10 years.

In any case, please have a Merry, merry, happy Capitalist Christmas. If you can afford it this year.

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