Multi-colored lights outline the eaves of our front porch.  From the street, passers-by can see through a faceted glass door into the front hall where the Christmas tree glitters. Closer up, that tree shows the tatters of many trips up and down the basement stairs.  Some of its branches droop. At least half of its original white lights have died, made up for by several hundred colorful new ones strung on.  Christmas lights, indoors and out, bring me joy at the holiday season. I like to think that people who display them, even in outrageous excess, actually do celebrate the “true meaning” of Christmas and choose to make public their spiritual hopes along with their decorative exuberance.

As to that “true meaning….”  A thoughtful and discerning study of the Bible, especially the Gospels, quickly reveals that our beloved Nativity Story is, well, not exactly what happened. It conflates, perhaps even fabricates, accounts of the birth of Jesus written decades after the fact (assuming it is a fact), according to some interpretive intention of the writer for the target audience.  Do the absolute facts matter? Depends on whom you ask. As for me, I merely wish that the Christmas spirit of love, generosity, hope, and kindness might prevail in the midst of greed, suffering, violence, and fear. Perhaps the lights of Christmas serve as a reminder for a little while anyway. And Christians still derive wonder and joy from that story, which ties together the entire Bible narrative.

With my small Bible study group, I’m discussing a series of lessons entitled What My Grandmothers Taught Me: Learning from the Women in Matthew’s Genealogy of Jesus. Inspired by the handful of women (literally—only five) included in this study, I made a list of my own. So far, I’ve noted twenty-nine women, from Eve to Priscilla. I’m calling them “women out of bounds,” based on the fact that Bible writers viewed most of them as outsiders in one way or another. Frankly, I don’t trust history (or philosophy or even science) written one hundred per cent from the perspective of men. Yet if men have made up stuff over the millennia, why can’t I?  Perhaps in time I’ll write my own essays or poems about each of those twenty-nine women who challenged and changed Bible history, even if most people never heard of most of them. Meanwhile, I plan to participate in making history in the world now.

Speaking of which, if you are not reading The 1619 Project, perhaps you should.  You need to make up your own mind about it.  Who wrote the history of America?  Whose voices and experiences were not included?  To whom have the noble principles of “liberty and justice for all” applied, and whose voices and experiences and contributions and hopes got left out?

Jesus might not recognize much of the story told about him in the Bible.  Most of the “facts” cannot be known, and Christians have been busy for two thousand years sorting it all out to suit themselves in countless interpretations. Right now, in America, we are living our own history. Facts can be known.  Ideals can be embraced.  Light can shine in the darkness.  Could be up to us.