Rethinking the nativity story

From the many intriguing details in Mahar Mangahas’ recent column here on the Roman census during the first Christmas (see “The first Christmas census,” 12/20/25), I picked out a reference to the hay on which the newborn infant Jesus lay. Unconsumed fodder for cattle, someone deemed it holy enough to keep as a souvenir. This holy hay was found by St. Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, who brought it back to Rome together with wood from the True Cross, and even the remains of the “Three Kings.” Vainly searching online for photographs of the hay, or at least the gilded, bejeweled, reliquaries that housed it led me to a rabbit hole of relics that made me rethink the nativity scenes or belen of my childhood.

There was a 19th-century account regarding a relic in the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, described as “an excavated block of red marble … shown as the cradle of Jesus in his infancy, and nearby … a basin in which Jesus is said to have been washed by his mother.” I always thought Jesus was just placed on the hay in the stable. Joseph may have been an exceptional carpenter but did he have time to fashion a crib or cradle at short notice without his tools? The Basilica of St. Mary Major in Rome used to have five pieces of wood from the manger, gifted to Pope Theodore I sometime around the year 640 by Sophronius, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem. One of the five pieces from the manger was returned to Bethlehem by Pope Francis in 2019, after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas made an informal request for its repatriation during a Vatican visit in December 2018. These ancient, questionable pieces of wood acted as diplomatic tools underscoring the long and friendly relations between the Eastern and Western churches.

Only Matthew has the story of the Three Kings: “After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, ‘Where is the one who has been born Kind of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.’ When King Herod heard this, he was disturbed and all Jerusalem with him. When he had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Messiah was to be born. ‘In Bethlehem in Judea,’ they replied, ‘for this is what the prophet has written: ‘But you Bethelehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah, for of you will come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.’

“Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. He sent them to Bethlehem and said, ‘Go and search carefully for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me so that I, too, may go and worship him.’ After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they were overjoyed.

“On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshipped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gold, frankincense and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.”

If I could only read New Testament Greek, this column will be way better, but the English translation alone made me rethink all the nativity scenes I have seen from childhood: on Christmas cards, the animated display at the old COD Department Store in Cubao, to the belen in our parish church. Matthew referred to “magi” who were magicians or “wise men,” not kings. Despite the description of their relics in Cologne Cathedral as “the crowned heads of the three holy kings,” we can assume they were astrologers for following a star.

Matthew did not specify their number. There could have been 12 as believed in the Eastern church, or three from the three presents of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. We can’t assume that they came together on camels, or that they were from the same country. Following a star, the magi met up in Jerusalem, spoke with Herod, then set off for Bethlehem together. Where the names Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar originated from is lost to history, but it does matter in the Philippines where children born on Jan. 6, the Feast of the Three Kings were named after them. Revolutionary heroine Melchora Aquino, the aged “Tandang Sora,” was born on Jan. 6, 1812 and was named after one of them.

While the skulls of the Three Kings are preserved in Cologne, some of their bone fragments are to be found in the Basilica of St. Eustorgio in Milan, in a spot marked by the Latin inscription: “SEVPLCRVM TRIVM NAGORVM” (Sepulcher of the Three Magi). Rethinking the nativity story made me unlearn and update the pious legends I was taught as a child. In my line of work, questions can sometimes be more important than answers. My iconoclasm is often misread as skepticism and doubt but these widen, rather than narrow, my views and what remains of the gifts of Christmas 2025.

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Comments are welcome at ambeth.ocampo@inquirer.net