The Christian tradition of Christmas is the result of different sources, which respond to differing theological motivations.
The narrative in the Gospel according to Saint Luke inserts the birth of Jesus into the grand universal history—through the mention of the census ordered by Emperor Augustus—but also places it within the prophetic stream of Israel, by relating the birth of John the Baptist, the precursor of the Messiah.
It is believed that the primary source for Luke’s account was the Virgin Mary (possibly near the end of her life). Only from her, or from her closest circle, could such intimate episodes have been known as the angel’s annunciation in Nazareth, the virginal pregnancy, and the visit of the pregnant young woman to Ain Karim, a village near Jerusalem and Bethlehem, where her relative Elizabeth, the mother of John, lived. That “visitation” may have been due to Joseph’s desire to avoid explanations in a small village like Nazareth.
Luke narrates the birth in Bethlehem in a stable, a place where childbirth had more privacy than in the overcrowded dwelling (which was not an “inn”) filled with relatives. In that stable, the newborn child receives, through angels, the adoration of the shepherds—people of ill repute in Israel due to their nomadic and marginal lifestyle.
Likewise, Luke reports that Jesus was circumcised on the eighth day and, as the firstborn, was “redeemed” in the Temple. There, two elderly prophets, Simeon and Anna, prophesy about the child’s future and that of his mother. It is striking that the Church does not celebrate the “feast of the circumcision” of Jesus, but does celebrate a less significant “feast of the presentation in the Temple.” Could this not be a way of downplaying the Hebrew roots of the Savior?
A characteristic detail in Luke—always attentive to revaluing the feminine—is that Mary (and not Joseph) is the one who imposes the name on the child, following the instruction of the angel Gabriel. The Temple reappears in the episode of Jesus being lost at age twelve and found among the doctors after “three days,” a story laden with Paschal symbolism.
If we only had the Gospel of Luke, we would know that Mary and Joseph lived in Nazareth, traveled to Bethlehem—the city of King David—where Jesus was born, and that shortly afterward they returned to Nazareth, where Jesus grew up until the beginning of his public life.
The Gospel of Saint Matthew draws on a different source. Through “tableaux” dense with biblical references, beginning with the genealogy of Jesus, it seeks to connect Jesus with the history—not always edifying—of Israel and with the house of David, from which Joseph descended as a member of the Davidic lineage of the Nazoreans, associated with the “netzer” (shoot or branch) of Jesse, father of David.
In a scene of great tension, Matthew relates the birth of Jesus from Joseph’s point of view, highlighting his dilemma between fulfilling the law (and repudiating Mary) or appearing “unjust” (and accepting her as his wife). In the end, he obeyed the order received from the angel in a dream.
Matthew mentions the birth in Bethlehem but explains the later residence in Nazareth as the consequence of a forced migration due to Herod’s persecution, the flight to Egypt, and the subsequent return—in clear allusion to the story of Joseph, son of Jacob, and to the Exodus. In another famous tableau, Matthew narrates the adoration of the Magi from the East—presented as an epiphany to the nations—their symbolic gifts, and the massacre of the innocents.
Thus, according to Matthew, Jesus was born in Bethlehem, taken to Egypt, and upon return, settled in Nazareth.
Everything else—the ox and the donkey; the names, number, and race of the Magi; the innkeeper’s rejection; the star that stops over the manger—belongs to certain apocryphal gospels, later popular tradition, and the arts.