A Brief Meditation on Christmas

I write about politics and policy a lot because I have to live with your vote and you with mine but write about religion hardly at all because our choices on that matter truly are separable and private. But today is Christmas, so here are some thoughts about Jesus.

The Roman Republic and then Empire spanned nearly 1,000 years, about 4 or 5 times as long as our American experiment, so any general thing one writes about them will be wrong and riddled with exceptions. That said, Roman morality was pretty much an answer to the question, "What can I get away with?" Power gave you license.

Jean Fouquet Madonna and Child, 1452

Arguably the core of Jesus's teaching was not just "do unto others as you would have them do to you," but "as you have done it to the least, you have done for me." Jesus' morality was not what you could get away with but was a question of how you treated the weakest, those least able - the woman you could overpower, the child you could berate, the poor person whose needs you could dismiss.

No one knows when Jesus was born but we pretend that he was born in the darkest week of the year, the time when the days are shortest.

Christmas. A time to think about how we'd be judged if we were only judged by how we treated the least among us and a time when we find comfort and joy even in the darkest days. That's a good day.
Merry Christmas!