The first Christmas census

If the Roman emperor Caesar Augustus, two millennia ago, only wanted a complete set of data about the population in Judea, the straightforward approach would have been to send enumerators there to count the various types of homes, count the number of residents, and ask any other questions. Why did he need the people of Judea, the Jews, to personally return to their respective hometowns?

The census was not a statistical exercise. It was a means of thorough loyalty checking and tax collection. We are told by Blessed Jacobus de Voragine that the emperor decreed “that all the men in his empire should go to the city from which they drew their origin, and pay to the governor of the province a silver denarius of their submission to the Roman empire, since the coin bore Caesar’s name and image. This payment was called both profession and enrollment, but for different reasons. The word profession was used because each man, when he remitted the head tax (the aforementioned denarius) to the provincial governor, placed it on his own head and declared aloud and in public that he was a subject of the empire. Enrollment meant that those who paid the head tax were given a number which was recorded in the rolls (italics in the original).”

The denarius (plural, denarii) was a silver coin worth enough to support a laborer’s family for a day. It was equivalent to ten “asses” (the plural of “as,” which was a bronze coin). Thus, each Jew’s public declaration of loyalty was witnessed, and a unique number—in effect a Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN), like the Philippine TIN—was assigned to him. The hometowns were evidently the internal revenue district offices of Judea.

The census was for men; a wife’s presence was not required. Voragine continues: “Joseph, being of the house and family of David, went up from Nazareth to Bethlehem to be enrolled. The time was approaching for Mary to be delivered, and Joseph took her with him. Not knowing how long he would be away, and unwilling to leave the treasure that God had entrusted to him in the care of strangers, he preferred to guard her with his own vigilant attention.”

Let’s recall that Mary was noticeably pregnant so soon after their betrothal, that Joseph was planning a quiet divorce, had he not been told by an angel to take her home already, the child in her womb being the Son of God (the feast of the annunciation and incarnation is March 25, nine months before Christmas). Mary’s ‘baby bump’ was surely visible during her three-month visit (feast day May 31) to her cousin Elizabeth, who was near to giving birth to John the Baptist (feast day June 24). Thus, Mary’s trip to Bethlehem was her second journey in six months.

The distance from Nazareth to Jerusalem is 90 to 100 kilometers, southward. That would have taken several days to walk. From Jerusalem to Bethlehem is another 11 km away. The daytime temperature in Jerusalem this week is chilly, between 8 and 11 degrees Celsius.

Voragine continues: “… Joseph and Mary came to Bethlehem. They were poor and could find no lodging in the inns, which already were full of people who had come for the same purpose; so they had to take shelter in a public passage. This passage … was located between two houses. It provided some overhead covering and served as a meeting place for townspeople who came there to talk or eat together in their free time, or when the weather was bad. Perhaps Joseph set up a manger for his ox and his ass, or, as some think, peasants coming in to market were used to tying up their animals there and the crib was ready to hand. In that place, at midnight, the eve of Sunday, the blessed Virgin gave birth to her Son and laid him on hay in the manger. This hay, which the ox and ass abstained from eating, was brought home by Saint Helena.”

Did Joseph enroll himself immediately? Did he have a chance to do it? In any case, the Holy Family was visited by shepherds and then by the Wise Men, whose gifts, especially the gold, were surely handy for booking passage to Egypt (the Nile is 700+ km from Bethlehem) when they fled in the night from the wrath of Herod the Great. (If Herod took the Wise Men seriously, why did he not have them followed from his palace after they told him why they had come from afar?)

[*Source of quotations: Blessed Jacobus de Voragine, “The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints,” 13th c., translated from Latin by William Granger Ryan, Princeton University Press, 1993, pages 37 and 38; italics in the original. Voragine (1230 to 1298) was archbishop of Genoa; he was beatified in 1816 by Pope Pius VII.]

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Contact: mahar.mangahas@sws.org.ph.