Is Christmas about objective fact or passionate belief? Consider:

Christmas is about enfleshed truth that is accountable, a body of information and series of events that can be rationally considered, verified out in the external world, and discussed among regular people as facts of life.

Among the facts are Bethlehem, Mary, Joseph, a baby, and a manger, none of which are feelings.

The facts also include the angels and the veracity of what they said to human beings, for what the shepherds saw and heard in Bethlehem was “as it had been told them” [Luke 2:20]. . . .  

What “had been told” the shepherds is not an experience that evaporates when they go into Bethlehem and then return back to work.

It is not the kind of phenomenon that melts away after one wakes up, puts the book down, leaves the theater, or arrives home after a big conference.

Young Jesus in swaddling clothes still lives and breathes after the visitors go away.

The angels returned to heaven, not to nonexistence, when the shepherds left to see and hear facts on the ground in Bethlehem.

As in everyday life, just because an event is past, it does not therefore become untrue or slip into epistemological shadows or nebulous worlds of private feelings.

The above is excerpted from "Christmas Spirit in Space and Time." Additional excerpts are forthcoming during this holiday season. If you would like to read ahead, go here.