As you enjoy the tinsel, bells, turkey and mulled wine, spare a thought for Herod, our much maligned ancestor. Or rather, I should say, the Herods. For this distinguished family of rulers spanned seven generations.
The New Testament itself refers, depending on how you count, to three or six individual members. Each one should glitter in our imagination, the remarkable women as much as the men. They are our models; yet, we deny them, at Christmas time more than ever.
No Herod is as libelled as Herod the Great. In a few days he will be remembered on the Feast of the Holy Innocents, the massacre he ordered of infant Jewish boys. Out of subservience to political correctness, his prudent reasons are ignored (more on those in a moment). Worse, his other achievements are ignored.
He resisted Cleopatra's sexual overtures, where lesser men did not. He used considerable diplomatic skills to steer safely through the conflict between Mark Antony and Octavian. Above all, and this really should mark him out as one of us, he was a great builder.
He built and reconstructed many cities. His projects include not just forts and royal, ecological palaces with parks, pools and a sanctuary for doves. But also theatres! And amphitheatres! When he came to rebuild the Temple, he was anxious to please his Jewish subjects and, though he may not have quite consulted them, he did entrust the supervision of the works, quite properly, to Jewish priests.
As for the matter of the massacre, what has come down to us is based on a misunderstanding. First, there would have been no need for it to be so extensive if it had not been for uncontrolled migration (due to the census imposed by Rome).
Second, no other government volunteered to share the burden of having a saviour in one's midst. If you give them half a chance, what saviours do is grow up, over-run the country and change your entire way of life. That this fate was intended for Herod's kingdom was clearly announced in the scriptures and by the fundamentalists of the epoch. By the time the magi arrived, the situation had reached crisis point.
Besides, Herod cannot be accused of discrimination. He had two of his own sons strangled when he suspected that they, too, were a danger to his liberal order and career.
In both his attitude to the environment and to cultural security, Herod the Great shared our sensitivities.
His son, Herod Antipas, in his turn gave us one of our fundamental political doctrines (not to mention a great tourist attraction, since, if he had not had John the Baptist beheaded, we would not have had the outstanding Caravaggio).
Contrary to widespread belief, the doctrine that politics and religion should be kept strictly separate, with religion restricted to the private realm, was the political platform of the Herodian party, not Jesus Christ's. When the Pharisees popped the question on Caesar and taxes, the Gospel tells us the Herodians were in the crowd.
The fact that Jesus's reply is recorded as astonishing the onlookers is a strong indication that he did not, in fact, endorse the well-known Herodian view. What his view really was may have some historical interest. But we subscribe to the Herod doctrine and should proudly acknowledge the progenitor.
With too little space to do justice to all the family, I must nonetheless mention Herodias.
We know Herodias as the mother of Salome and wife of her uncle Antipas, having previously been married to his half-brother. If we did her justice, we would recognise that nowadays she would be the woman of substance in any primetime soap opera.
She was true to herself and followed her feelings. Soaring above parochial gossip, she married Antipas, in a move contrary to all Jewish tradition, and urged her husband to stand up to the Roman emperor. Unfortunately, he happened to be the psychotic Caligula. When Antipas was exiled to Lyons, Herodias was spared. But she refused the emperor's gift and joined her husband.
In our sense of political-cultural security, of the proper place of religion, of what constitutes personal authenticity and cultural and sexual sophistication, we are all Herodians now. Yet, apart from our delight in receiving hampers filled with the goods of a certain London department store (whose name we pronounce, in an evident Freudian slip, as Herods), Christmas is a time where, far from celebrating our origins, we deny them. Why?
The pessimists among us will say that this is another alarming sign of our loss of identity. I am inclined, however, to take a more optimistic view.
I believe that our denial of Herod in this holiday season is merely ritualistic - a holiday from ourselves. Sophistication has its toll. Rest is necessary. As any Herod (or Herodias) could tell us, being Herod is not just for Christmas.
ranierfsadni@europe.com