This is the time of year, as Hillary Clinton once put it, when Christians celebrate "the birth of a homeless child" — or, in Al Gore's words, "a homeless woman gave birth to a homeless child."Just for the record, Jesus wasn't "homeless." He had a perfectly nice home back in Nazareth. But he happened to be born in Bethlehem. It was census time and Joseph was obliged to schlep halfway across the country to register in the town of his birth. Which is such an absurdly bureaucratic over-regulatory cockamamie Big Government nightmare it's surely only a matter of time before Massachusetts or California reintroduce it.
Righto! But to the matter at hand:
Just for a moment, let us say, as Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins and the other best-selling atheists insist, that what happened in Bethlehem two millennia is a lot of mumbo-jumbo. As I wrote a year ago, consider it not as an event but as a narrative: You want to launch a big new global movement from scratch. So what do you use?
The birth of a child. On the one hand, what could be more powerless than a newborn babe? On the other, without a newborn babe, man is ultimately powerless. For, without new life, there can be no civilization, no society, no nothing. Even if it's superstitious mumbo-jumbo, the decision to root Christ's divinity in the miracle of His birth expresses a profound — and rational — truth about "eternal life" here on Earth.
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It's hard not to conclude a form of mental illness has gripped the world's elites. If you're one of that dwindling band of Westerners who will be celebrating the birth of a child, "homeless" or otherwise, next week, make the most of it. A year or two on, and the eco-professors will propose banning Nativity scenes because they set a bad example.
