A Businessman’s View of the First Christmas

Anyone in business tends to look at historical events with a business eye. Since this is Christmas, I’d like to add my views on what may have happened in the events that led up to the birth of Christ. And since theologians nowadays seem to speculate all over the place about the events of the life of Christ, I will use some literary license.

The Gospel of Luke tells us that Mary traveled to the hill country of Judah to visit her cousin Elizabeth, who was six months pregnant. Since the distance from Nazareth to Judah was about 120 miles in those days, due to winding mountain roads, Joseph most likely traveled with her. A man can walk 20 miles in a day, so now we’re talking two weeks minimum round-trip travel time. Enough for a life-changing experience.

Joseph was called a carpenter, but at the beginning of his career may have worked only in stone, a more primitive working material. Coming from the small town of Nazareth, he was perhaps unaware of a technological revolution taking place in construction methods. Woodworking, especially using geometric measurements, was a new development from the Greeks, the high technology of the day. It could be that Joseph, in meeting and networking with others along the journey to Judah, was exposed to this new technology. He likely saw the uses of geometric wood cuts in animal-drawn carts and fine homes.

Expanding His Knowledge Base

I can just see this foster-father of Jesus saying, “Look, Mary, we can take this woodworking back to Nazareth and my customers will love it!” If this is the route he took, Joseph would have to expand his knowledge base to learn more math to accommodate angles and the rudimentary form of trigonometry of its day to make his wood cuts. Many months after their trip to Judah, Joseph could have taken the gold from one of the three wise men who visited Christ and invested it in new saws, hammers, nails and various types of wood. (Since the gold was a gift and not earned income, it would have escaped the hands of the tax collectors.)

It could be that Joseph hired other tradesmen and expanded his business. But people being who they are, his workers may have demanded higher wages and better working conditions. Since not one word of Joseph’s was recorded in the Bible, we can speculate that Joseph was not a good communicator, and could not solve his company problems. Maybe the stress of his new business led to heart failure, and that is why he died before Jesus was 30, as tradition says.

Yet, the Bible says that Joseph was a “just man,” and we can assume that he died with a clear conscience, and that is why he is the patron saint of the dying.

All this from a journey to Judah to visit a relative.