"they don't realize that this Book is their enemy" Put The Meaning In The Christmas Narratives Back Into It And FOX Will Declare War on Christmas

Afterwards we read how Joseph was informed by an angel of the death of Herod and he returned to Israel:

But when Joseph heard that Archelaus was governing in Judea in place of his father Herod,  he was afraid to go there;  and having been warned in dreams, he went to the province of Galilee.  When he reached there, he went to live in the town of Nazareth.

WILLIAM: "They were practically in the underground."

Another boy:  They were right to stay in hiding, because even if Herod was already dead, there was another dictator there;  just as if a Somoza dies and somebody else is in power,  you're still always afraid. 

I said that this Herod Archelaus that was left governing Judea was the cruelest of the sons of Herod and was even crueler than his father;  his government was inaugurated with a riot by the people and he killed more than three thousand demonstrators who were asking for freedom for political prisoners and for tax cuts.  In Galilee Herod Antipas ruled, who was less dreadful,  even though he was the one that killed John the Baptist and was governing at the time of the death of Christ. 

My brother FERNANDO said:  "The old dictator died and the angel tells Joseph that they can come back now, but that doesn't mean that now there wouldn't be more people that would want to kill the child.  In fact his life continued in danger and that's why they were in that insignificant little town of Galilee,  and part of his public life he also spent half in hiding, until they finally killed him.  And the same thing will happen to anyone who gets involved with liberation.  He'll get out of one danger only to fall into another.  And this you always have to keep in mind.  The angel informed that one danger had ended . . . for the moment."

ALEJANDRO:  "And Mary was screwed from the very first, right?  It was thirty years of fighting right back beside her son, risking herself just like him from when he was a child until he died.  That seems to me a good lesson for every mother.  And another lesson as Joseph."

And OLIVIA,  Alejandro's mother:  " What Alejandro says is quite right,  and fathers and mothers ought to think a lot about it.  That mother went with her son until his death and willingly.  But nowadays many times mothers are the first to be opposed to their sons fighting for freedom.   Some of them don't even like the boys and girls to come to the meetings, so they don't get involved.  I, when I heard that some young people were taking over at the cathedral,  I wanted to be close to them,  I wanted to be able to go and see them, help them in some way.  And even take the microphone and talk also."

FERNANDO:  "I don't understand how you can read the Gospels and get spiritual lessons for your life out of it and not get involved in the Revolution.  This Book has a very clear political position for anyone that reads it simply, as you read it.  But there are people in Managua who read this Book, and they are friends of Herod;  and they don't realize that this Book is their enemy.

So that what the prophets said could be fulfilled;  that Jesus was going to be called a Nazarene.

I said that Nazareth was a place so humble that it is not mentioned even once in the Old Testament, and we don not know exactly what prophecies Saint Matthew is referring to.  It is believed that he may be punning with a Hebrew name of similar sound that has been given to the Messiah that means "sprout".   One thing seems certain, that this is what the name "Nazarene" that Jesus had was a nickname given to him by his enemies to make fun of his humble origins."

GLORIA:  "To say 'from Nazareth' might be like saying 'from Nindiri' . . . or worse, 'from Solentiname.' "  

JOSE,  Mariita's husband, said:  "His nickname meant that he was a man of the people, and he was a man of the people, including even that his parents hadn't been married, were engaged to be married and she was pregnant, as so often happens with the poor, with that problem of the poor, then, the Messiah was born, son of an unwed mother."

WILLIAM (smiling):  "And they didn't know who the father was. . . "
MARIITA:  "But he married her because he loved her."  

That is the last part of this chapter from The Gospel in Solentiname.  As RMJ pointed out during Advent, far from being fairy tales and children's books both accounts of the Birth of Jesus are dark and troubling stories of a child being born and a mother giving birth in dangerous and primitive and, as everyone who first heard the stories would know, filthy conditions, as humble as could be had.  And if that weren't enough, the king wants to hunt him down and kill him, willing to kill lots of baby boys in order to kill him - as in an earlier passage they pointed out the American supported dictatorship in Nicaragua killed a bunch of farmers to kill the one who was a union organizer. 

Back when I was a kid there were a lot of people who liked to talk about "putting the Christ back in Christmas".   I remember my mother wondering when Christ got taken out of it but, then, she was seriously Catholic. 

If FOX had any idea what REALLY reading the stories of Christmas meant, as Fernando Cardenal said, they'd be the first to declare war on it.