David McElroy

Everybody knows what the nativity scene looks like. There were shepherds and their sheep on the left, bundled up on the cold winter night. On the right were three sharply dressed men — the three kings — who had come to worship Jesus. With Mary and Joseph in the middle is a strangely silent and wise-looking baby — who appears to have a 25-watt bulb inside his head to give Him an unearthly glow.

This is shared cultural mythology about Christmas. We’ve picked it up from movies, nativity scenes and Hallmark cards, but it’s not in the Bible. We fall prey to Christmas myths just as easily as we fall prey to political and economic ones. How many of these myths have you fallen for over the years?

Jesus was born on Dec. 25. Well, no. We don’t know the date. They didn’t have calendars hanging on walls back then and there’s no reason to believe they celebrated (or even noticed) birthdays. From the fact that shepherds were in the fields, according to the Bible, we know it wasn’t in December. I’ve read speculation ranging from spring all the way through September.

So why do we celebrate Jesus’ birth on Dec. 25? Simply because that’s when the Catholic church arbitrarily decided to celebrate it. There was a traditional non-religious holiday on that date anyway, which fell just after the winter solstice around Dec. 21. Since people were accustomed to a winter celebration then, the church gave them Christmas to take its place. That tradition continued to be followed by Protestant churches even after they broke away from Rome. There’s certainly nothing wrong with the date, but it has no biblical significance. You may even use this factoid to absolve yourself when you send people their gifts a few days (or even months) late.

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The Bible tells us that wise men came to visit the newborn Jesus, but it doesn’t say how many there were. So why is it that we popularly hear of three wise men visiting? Well, it turns out the fourth has been lost to history because his gift was completely unacceptable.

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Ron Paul isn’t a racist, but he’s shown remarkably poor judgment so far related to his old newsletters containing racially charged language. If you’re going to play in the Big Leagues, you have to play by Big League rules. His response to the newsletter issue so far has been completely Bush League.

If you’ve been hiding under a rock, here’s the issue. Back in the late ’80s and ’90s, Paul published a series of political newsletters as a moneymaking venture. They were written in his name, but he obviously didn’t write them. (I’ve ghost-written hundreds of pieces for clients in the past. It’s perfectly acceptable.) But some of the newsletters have racial language in them that I don’t find acceptable, and it’s hard for me to believe anybody else would.

The newsletters are aimed at a strongly conservative white audience. They paint the world in terms of good Christian white folks vs. the black “thugs” and gays who “hate Euro-American civilization and everything it stands for.” The framing of the issues is repugnant. In a direct mail piece advertising the newsletter, it goes far enough to forecast a “race war.” You just can’t come up with a good enough excuse to justify the content.

I think I understand what happened, at least from a political point of view. The people running the newsletter — which might or might not have actually included Paul — were targeting an audience of the Old Right, trying to build bridges between libertarian economic ideas and what those unreconstructed old-time conservatives already believed. Ever since the ’60s, various people have tried to build some sort of fusion between libertarians and existing groups. I see this as a misguided attempt to do that with the Old Right conservatives it was obviously written to appeal to.

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