You Think Christmas is Commercialized? Read On.

 

December 28, 2024

 

I was listening to the pastor on my radio Bible Study talk about how Mary and Joseph, in the teeth of the inevitable gossip surrounding Jesus’s birth, still did everything by the book, as far as registering his birth, getting him circumcised, naming him, etc. They even took him to Jerusalem for the ceremony, instead of staying local and saving themselves the trouble and expense of travel (although later, in another context, he said the distance between Bethlehem and Jerusalem was 5 miles—so, assuming they didn’t pop back to Nazareth and then go to Jerusalem for the circumcision when the baby was 8 days old, it was a hike, sure, but not days’ worth of travel and inn fees).

I’m sorry to say that what fascinated me wasn’t the young couple’s courage, but how much it cost to have a firstborn son back then.

You had to pay 5 shekels of silver to redeem him from the priests, if he wasn’t born a Levite. A shekel was either 5 days’ wages or a month’s wages, depending on which source you look at. (The Bible study guy went with 5 days.) So you lost either 25 days of wages or 5 months; either way, it’s a hefty chunk of change for the average Joseph.

Then, once the mother had finished her term of purification, she had to bring a lamb and a young pigeon or turtledove to the priests; if she couldn’t afford a lamb, then she could bring 2 turtledoves or pigeons. More money. And the pastor implied that the priests charged for the circumcision as well, although I haven’t seen that in my online dive.

In any case, I was getting more and more frosted, thinking of how much money people had to spend when they had a kid. Did the Lord really order all this, or did the priests insert a few passages here and there later on?

So, the next time you’re griping about how Christmas is commercialized, don’t forget to read your Bible. The authors wrote the book on capitalizing on a birth.

 

(As one of my friends pointed out, Jesus himself said to throw out all those old laws, so I guess He redeemed the system—no pun intended, for real.)