CREEDE HINSHAW: Herod’s slaughter of males mirrors today

The most tragic element of the Christmas story will probably never be depicted in a nativity pageant. The murderous, jealous tyrant Herod slaughtered all the male children ages 2 years or younger in and around the region of Bethlehem in reaction to the news (Matthew 2) that the Messiah had been born.

This undertone of slaughter and cruelty, along with the flight of Joseph and Mary to Egypt, takes the birth of Jesus in a direction most people would prefer to deny. Even so, the Feast of the Holy Innocents, as it is usually named, is worthy of observance.

No part of the Christmas story offers more unsettling and realistic parallels to life in the 21st century. Words and phrases pour forth: asylum-seekers, immigrants, refugees, border protection and security, detention centers, children and parents fleeing violence, caravans and leaky lifeboats, destitution, persecuted families, government hit squads, shadowy unscrupulous forces, walls and fences, religious persecution, custom officials, green cards, violent offenders, children separated from parents, sanctuary cities …

Since around 500 A.D. the church has remembered this bloodbath by setting aside a special mass of observance. Not all churches agree on the dating of the Feast of the Holy Innocents, it falling somewhere between Dec. 28-Jan. 10. Most Protestants ignore this date altogether. I never remember observing it in any formal way in the 36 years of active ministry.

In preparation for a Sunday School lesson I recently taught on Matthew 2:13-23, I relied on Raymond Brown (“The Birth of the Messiah”) and a number of internet sources to fill in my relative lack of knowledge on this subject.

There is much the church does not know about what happened on that first murderous day and many modern scholars are not convinced that the massacre even took place.

But the church has rightfully recognized that a bloodthirsty tyrant, jealous and insecure as are all dictators, engaged in a form of genocide in a vain effort to protect his power. Estimates of the number of babies and infants killed ranges from a couple of dozen to 144,000. Churches in Rome, Milan, Padua and Lisbon claim to have relics of those tender babies’ bodies.

Other stories have cropped up to satisfy the curiosity of believers who wanted to know details of the flight of Joseph, Mary and Jesus to Egypt. Legends both fetching and fantastic have sprung forth, with various locations in Egypt claiming to be places where the fearful family dwelt. One place, some 200 miles south of Cairo on the Nile River, even claims to be where two men, who would eventually die on the cross next to Jesus, waylaid the refugees in a foreshadowing of their fate.

“Coventry Carol,” one of my favorite Christmas songs, marks this terrible event. Perhaps its most dramatic presentation of this 13th century English song was in the bombed-out shell of the Coventry Cathedral in 1940. The lyrics include this stanza:

Herod the King, in his raging,

Charged he hath this day,

His men of might, in his own sight,

All children young, to slay.

The Feast of the Holy Innocents reminds us that goodness always threatens evil but that darkness cannot ultimately overcome light. May the church whose Savior Jesus knew persecution and whose parents understood asylum be ever sensitive to the plight of those fleeing deplorable circumstances.

Email Creede Hinshaw at [email protected].