“The Massacre of the Innocents,” an 1824 painting by Léon Cogniet.
The Escape to Egypt
Now after they had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.” Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, “Out of Egypt I have called my son.”
The Massacre of the Infants
When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the magi, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the magi. Then what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:
“A voice was heard in Ramah,
wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.”
Matthew 2: 13-18 NRVue
I think I've said in the past that it would have been unthinkable during my years of congregational ministry to focus on yesterday's "downer" Christian feast day during the Christmas season. The fourth day of Christmas is not actually about calling birds, a theme I could get behind, but the slaughter of children. Ugh. It is called the Feast of the Holy Innocents or the Massacre of the Innocents and refers to a disturbing story found only in Matthew's gospel and not corroborated by any other historical writers of the period. Herod the not-so-great, the despotic Roman king of Judah, can't find the infant Jesus the Magi had come to worship. So in his fury he orders the deaths of all the toddlers and infants in his realm.
There has been a strange debate this year over whether Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus Family in flight to Egypt were truly refugees -- what else would they be? It seems that even this gospel story has been politicized by those in different parts of the world who want to claim to be Jesus followers but have a hate on for migrants and refugees. 2025 has been rife with the photos of starving and displaced children in Gaza and Sudan and elsewhere.
I hadn't realized that this feast day is also known as Childermass, and somehow this name helps bring into focus the reminder that children are innocent and subject to the whims of the adults around them. What if infant Jesus had been murdered or died on the challenging journey to and from Egypt?
I saw a tweet from New Testament professor Esau McCaulley that led me to an article he wrote for the New York Times six years ago and it struck me as both relevant and worthy of sharing, or at least a portion of it. Here are a few paragraphs from that powerful piece.
Why is it important that the church calendar tells this story at the beginning of the Christmas season? Why should anyone care about the dates on a Christian calendar, especially in a time in which people have rightly questioned the excessive quest for power that marks some corners of the church?
The church calendar calls Christians and others to remember that we live in a world in which political leaders are willing to sacrifice the lives of the innocent on the altar of power. We are forced to recall that this is a world with families on the run, where the weeping of mothers is often not enough to win mercy for their children. More than anything, the story of the innocents calls upon us to consider the moral cost of the perpetual battle for power in which the poor tend to have the highest casualty rate.But how can such a bloody and sad tale do anything other than add to our despair?
The Christmas story must be told in the context of suffering and death because that’s the only way the story makes any sense. Where else can one speak about Christmas other than in a world in which racism, sexism, classism, materialism and the devaluation of human life are commonplace? People are hurting, and the epicenter of that hurt, according to the Feast of the Holy Innocents, remains the focus of God’s concern.
This feast suggests that things that God cares about most do not take place in the centers of power. The truly vital events are happening in refugee camps, detention centers, slums and prisons. The Christmas story is set not in a palace surrounded by dignitaries but among the poor and humble whose lives are always subject to forfeit. It’s a reminder that the church is not most truly herself when she courts power. The church finds her voice when she remembers that God “has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble,” as the Gospel of Luke puts it.
The very telling of the Christmas story is an act of resistance. This is how the biblical story functioned for my ancestors who gathered in the fields and woods of the antebellum South. They saw in the Christian narrative an account of a God who cared for the enslaved and wanted more for them than the whip and the chain. For them Christianity did not merely serve the disinherited — it was for the disinherited, the “weak things” that shamed the strong.
Christians believe that none of this suffering was in vain. The cries of the oppressed do not go forever unanswered. We believe that the children slaughtered by Herod were ushered into the presence of God and will be with him for eternity. The Christian tradition also affirms that Jesus’ suffering served a purpose, that when the state ordered his death, God was at work. Through the slaughter of the truly innocent one, God was emptying death of its power, vanquishing evil and opening the path toward forgiveness and reconciliation.
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