Why I Still Celebrate Christmas Despite Not Believing in Magical Babies

In a world filled with so much despair, I'm thankful for a holiday that reminds us that life gets better.

My son Charlie doesn’t want to go to Christmas Eve service this year.

I can’t say I blame him. We’re not church-going people by nature. But more importantly, he’s old enough now that he’s started to realize the Christmas story is mostly fiction.

No, not Santa. He still believes in that dude. I mean Jesus. Or as he’s better known this time of year, li’l baby Jesus.

Despite his pleading, my wife and I have decided we’re going to church anyway. It might seem cruel to force our only child to put on uncomfortable clothes and sit in a stuffy church to publically celebrate a magical baby whose talents were wildly exaggerated. Can’t we just stay home and watch claymation specials in our pajamas like a normal American family?

Well, here’s the thing. 

My dad was a pastor. He preached for various U.C.C. churches during his life. So growing up, skipping church was never an option for me, especially on Christmas. But as a pre-teen, I started to revolt. I was never enamored by the Bible in general, but the Christmas story seemed especially riddled with plot holes. A virgin birth? Stars serving as reliable GPS? Rich fuckers walking on foot to a baby shower? C’mon! Why should I have to sit through that ridiculous yarn and sing those stupid carols when I wasn’t buying any of it?

My dad mostly ignored my protests. But then one day, he sat me down and gave me the Christmas Talk. “You don’t like the magic baby?” he said. “I don’t blame you. I have mixed feelings about that part too. But that’s not why Christmas matters.”

Christmas, he told me, is about a married couple having a crappy year. They’re homeless, they’re broke, they’re pregnant (some-fucking-how), they have no friends or family or community of any sort. But then something weird happens. They stumble on a manger where they can crash for the night, which is basically an open-air Dollar Inn. Their baby is born healthy and not, as you’d expect from a starving woman giving birth in hay, dead on arrival. This freaking kid is so healthy, his head glows.

The next day, random strangers start showing up and handing them gifts. “We heard you had a baby last night! Mazel tov! Here’s some frankincense!” They’re confused but grateful. Yesterday they had nothing, but today everything is… better. Not great—they’re still homeless, and Joseph has some questions about how Mary got knocked up without them consummating—but it’s better than the hellscape their lives were yesterday. They’re new parents with a healthy baby boy, a bunch of new friends, and enough frankincense to last the year. WTF, but okay!

That’s the real message of Christmas, my dad told me. Life can be arbitrarily cruel, unfair, and ugly. But sometimes it isn’t. On some days, the weight of life’s shittiness can feel like it’s going to crush you. But tomorrow... maybe it won’t.

My dad’s favorite part of the Christmas story, he told me, is when the angel tells Mary and Joseph, “I bring you tidings of great joy.” Just that line, not the rest when a heavenly voice says (I’m paraphrasing), “I impregnated your wife, you stupid cuckold, so rejoice!” Just “I bring you tidings of great joy.” That, to him, was the whole point of Christmas. It’s about believing in unrealistic hope. Today might be a shitshow, and your life is collapsing like poorly assembled Jenga blocks, and you have no idea how you’re going to make it through another day. But tomorrow, despite all evidence to the contrary, might not completely suck.

I don’t believe in the Christmas story. I believe it happened like I believe Harry Potter was a real kid. But I love the sentiment of it. It reminds me of my dad and the way he beamed at his congregation on Christmas Eve, like a kid in the ‘70s about to open a Star Wars Cantina Adventure Kit. I’m sure his services were full of Bible readings, but I only remember that one line, which he’d say slowly, relishing every syllable: “I bring you… tidings… of great joy.” He’d repeat it a few times during his Christmas Eve sermon, just to make sure it sunk in. And then he let the words hang in the air like a sharp relief.

I bring you tidings of great joy.

So that, I told Charlie, is why even agnostics like us go to church on Christmas. Not because of the magic baby or the carols or the promise of Christian salvation. We do it for the reminder that things get better. Sometimes inexplicably. And sometimes in such small ways, we barely notice.

I am a cynic with the heart of an optimist. Rationally, I know we’re all doomed. The world is fucked, and humanity is circling the drain of a big, filthy Earth toilet. But maybe not! Maybe tomorrow we’ll all be surprised and life won’t skullfuck us with more terrible news. It probably will, but Christmas is a holiday where we’re allowed to be laughably hopeful.

It’s the only miracle in the Bible that feels true. Mary and Joseph don’t part any Red Seas, or turn water into wine, or survive being digested by a huge fish. They just have a profoundly rotten day, and then the next morning, their lives are marginally better. They don’t win the lottery. They don’t move to the suburbs near a good school and all their problems disappear. They just get a weekend crash pad and a pocketful of myrrh.

They don’t know yet that their kid will grow up to inspire a religion that’s problematic at best. They’re just amazed that they haven’t killed the baby. I remember being a new parent, waking up every morning and being astounded that our child hadn’t died in the night. “We did it!” I’d tell my wife. Being a new parent sucks. You’re covered in poop, you’re exhausted, you’re not sure how you’re paying for any of this, and you miss having friends. But every day you’re all still alive and healthy feels like a miracle.

As a sneering pre-teen, I didn’t get what my dad was saying. But as a middle-aged adult, it hits me on a gut level. I don’t go to church on Christmas Eve to hear the story of a magical baby who grows up to say beautiful poetry that douchebags misunderstand. I go to hear the story of a couple that's been beaten down by the world, who are THIS CLOSE to giving the fuck up, who’ve done the best they can just to keep their heads above water and still can’t catch a break. I don’t sing those carols for Jesus, I sing for Joseph. Because I am Joseph, trying to look optimistic as he waits to see if his credit card isn’t declined at the grocery store. I’m Joseph waiting for his doctor to call with blood test results. I’m waiting for a miracle, which at this point is just someone with authority saying, “I bring you tidings of great joy.”

Hope you have a happy holiday, however you celebrate. No magical baby is coming to save you or any of us. But may 2024 bring you tidings of great joy. Today is shit, but tomorrow could be less shit. Merry Christmas!