Christmas as development

Another (possibly) interesting way of looking at the Christmas story is through the lens of economic development. Christmas may be viewed as the story of some very poor people who managed to live through very challenging times, surviving a number of threats to their lives created by the underdeveloped conditions in which they lived.

It is difficult to imagine that life expectancy, infant mortality, or education levels were much better (and were probably much worse) than they are today in much of the developing world. Most children did not live to adulthood, and it is remarkable that a child born under the presumably unsanitary conditions that reigned in the barn of the local inn (itself probably just someone's home, with some rooms rented out to earn some income) after a long pre-natal journey by mule-back would survive.

Perhaps Jesus' birth was miraculous in a more conventional sense.

Indeed, it is unsurprising that so much of the new testament is devoted to accounts of the miraculous healings that Jesus performed--presumably because illness, under extremely unsanitary conditions and with poor medical treatment--would be rife.

Under conditions like this, and where the state was relatively weak and there was no social safety net provided by government, informal social institutions within communities and ethnic groups would take on great importance as the only places to turn when people encountered misfortune and needed a hand. Religious orders, community and family groups, and local power-brokers would be the only places people could turn for help if they were sick or needed money. Small wonder that Jesus' attempts to craft a new social order were frightening to local elites!