It’s Christmas season, a time filled with lights, music, and familiar stories. Yet Christmas is not only a celebration of sentiment; it is a declaration of history.
The Gospel writers deliberately placed the birth of Jesus within historical settings, naming rulers, locations, and events. Christianity has always insisted that God acted within human history, not outside it. This conviction later shaped how time itself was recorded and remembered.
First, recognize Christ at the center of time.
Luke 2:1 says, “In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world.”
In the year 525, a monk named Dionysius Exiguus, working in Rome, proposed a new way of counting years. Instead of measuring time by emperors and empires, he suggested that history be reckoned from the birth of Jesus Christ. He called this system Anno Domini, a Latin term meaning “In the Year of Our Lord.”
Later, in the eighth century, an English monk known as the Venerable Bede introduced the term “Before Christ” to describe the years prior to Jesus’ birth.
Together, AD, a Latin designation, and BC, articulated by an English scholar, placed Christ at the very center of historical memory. Time itself was reorganized around Him, not by political decree, but by theological conviction.
Christmas invites us to see that Christ is not only central to faith, but central to history. Our lives, like time itself, find their true meaning when Christ becomes the reference point.
Second, believe that God truly entered human history.
John 1:14 says, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”
Luke introduces the birth of Jesus by naming rulers, places, and political events. Caesar Augustus, Quirinius, the census, and Bethlehem are not symbols or metaphors, they are verifiable historical realities. Christmas is not a “once upon a time” story. It is God entering the world at a specific moment, under a real empire, among ordinary people.
Because God entered history, He also enters our lives. Our struggles, questions, and daily realities are not too ordinary or too complex for Him. Christmas assures us that God meets us where we are, in real time and real circumstances.
As we mark the Christmas season, let us remember that this celebration is rooted not only in tradition but in truth. Time itself bears witness to Christ, and history testifies that God has incarnated. | NWI
