At the heart of the
Christmas story rests some important lessons concerning free enterprise,
government, and the role of wealth in society.
Let’s begin with one of
the most famous phrases: “There’s no room at the inn.” This phrase is often
invoked as if it were a cruel and heartless dismissal of the tired travelers
Joseph and Mary. Many renditions of the story conjure up images of the couple
going from inn to inn only to have the owner barking at them to go away and
slamming the door.
In fact, the inns were
full to overflowing in the entire Holy Land because of the Roman emperor’s
decree that everyone be counted and taxed. Inns are private businesses, and
customers are their lifeblood. There would have been no reason to turn away
this man of royal lineage and his beautiful, expecting bride.
In any case, the second
chapter of St. Luke doesn’t say that they were continually rejected at place
after place. It tells of the charity of a single inn owner, perhaps the first
person they encountered, who, after all, was a businessman. His inn was full,
but he offered them what he had: the stable. There is no mention that the
innkeeper charged the couple even one copper coin, though given his rights as
a property owner, he certainly could have.
And yet we don’t even
know the innkeeper’s name. In two thousand years of celebrating Christmas,
tributes today to the owner of the inn are absent. Such is the fate of the
merchant throughout all history: doing well, doing good, and forgotten for
his service to humanity. It’s remarkable, then, to think that when the Word
was made flesh with the birth of Jesus, it was through the intercessory work
of a private businessman. Without his assistance, the story would have been
very different indeed. People complain about the “commercialization” of
Christmas, but clearly commerce was there from the beginning, playing an
essential and laudable role.
Clearly, if there was a
room shortage, it was an unusual event and brought about through some sort of
market distortion. After all, if there had been frequent shortages of rooms
in Bethlehem, entrepreneurs would have noticed that there were profits to be
made by addressing this systematic problem, and built more inns.
Moving on in the story,
we come to Three Kings, also called Wise Men. Talk about a historical
anomaly for both to go together! Most kings behaved like the Roman Emperor’s
local enforcer, Herod. Not only did he order people to leave their homes
and foot the bill for travel so that they could be taxed. Herod was also a
liar: he told the Wise Men that he wanted to find Jesus so that he could
“come and adore Him.” In fact, Herod wanted to kill Him. Hence, another
lesson: you can’t trust a political hack to tell the truth. It was because of
a government decree that Mary and Joseph, and so many others like them, were
traveling in the first place. They had to be uprooted for
fear of the emperor’s census workers and tax collectors. And consider the
costs of slogging all the way “from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth,
into Judea, unto the city of David,” not to speak of the opportunity costs
Joseph endured having to leave his own business. Thus we have another
lesson: government’s use of coercive dictates distort the market.
Once having found the Holy Family, what gifts did the Wise Men bring? Not
soup and sandwiches, but “gold, frankincense, and myrrh.” These were the most
rare items obtainable in that world in those times, and they must have
commanded a very high market price.
Far from rejecting them as extravagant, the Holy Family accepted them as
gifts worthy of the Divine Messiah. Neither is there a record that suggests
that the Holy Family paid any capital gains tax on them, though such gifts
vastly increased their net wealth. Hence, another lesson: there is nothing
immoral about wealth; wealth is something to be valued, owned privately,
given and exchanged.
When the Wise Men and the
Holy Family got word of Herod’s plans to kill the newborn Son of God, did
they submit? Not at all. The Wise Men, being wise, snubbed Herod and
“went back another way” – taking their lives in their hands (Herod conducted
a furious search for them later). As for Mary and Joseph, an angel advised
Joseph to “take the child and his mother, and fly into Egypt.” In short, they
resisted. Lesson number four: the angels are on the side of those who resist
government.
In the Gospel narratives, the role of private enterprise, and the evil of
government power, only begin there. Jesus used commercial examples in his
parables (e.g., laborers in the vineyard, the parable of the talents) and
made it clear that he had come to save even such reviled sinners as tax
collectors.
And just as His birth was facilitated by the owner of an “inn,” the same
Greek word “kataluma” is employed to describe the location of the Last Supper
before Jesus was crucified by the government. Thus, private enterprise was
there from birth, through life, and to death, providing a refuge of safety
and productivity, just as it has in our time.
