Investigating Christmas: The evidence behind the baby in the manger

Neighborhoods sparkle with Christmas decorations. Retail businesses anticipate rising sales. Calendars rapidly fill with holiday parties. Children’s excitement grows in anticipation.

Christmas is around the corner — a holiday celebrated worldwide by believers and skeptics alike. Whether people celebrate Christmas as one of the most important holidays in the Christian faith or simply as a time to enjoy family and friends, most agree the holiday holds a special place in our cultural and spiritual landscape.

I grew up in a household where Christmas centered on family unity and love. Even though my parents professed the Catholic faith, my childhood Christmas memories focus on the excitement of Christmas Eve dinner followed by a visit from Santa Claus. I knew the occasion marked Jesus’ birth, but I didn’t know much about the baby in the manger.

By the time I reached college, my frustrating quest for spiritual clarity, paired with a mind drawn to science, had pushed me into agnosticism. If I couldn’t touch it, see it, and prove it, it evidently wasn’t real.

But life has a way of pushing even the most skeptical people into questioning their faith. I was 24 when a set of traumatic and unsettling events made me start questioning everything I claimed not to believe. With a mind filled with questions and an open heart to the possibility of a God who cares for humanity, I began my journey into the Christian faith.

I had a mentor for the journey: a 75-year-old Presbyterian pastor and scholar with a sharp mind and patience, who did not flinch at difficult questions. Pastor Oswaldo took me under his wing for several months as he lovingly opened the pages of Scriptures and history. When Christmas 1994 arrived, I celebrated it for the first time as a true believer in Christ.

During my years as a journalist for this paper, I have had the privilege of interviewing many Christian leaders and bestselling authors for my podcast and this column. But few conversations have felt as timely for the Christmas season as my recent interview with bestselling author and former legal journalist Lee Strobel.

Strobel is known worldwide for his investigative approach to faith — a method he honed as an award-winning legal editor for the Chicago Tribune and later applied as a skeptic to scrutinize Christianity. His journey from atheism to belief, documented in his classic “The Case for Christ,” has brought millions to consider the claims of Jesus with fresh eyes.

In his newest book, “The Case for Christmas,” Strobel applies that same investigative lens to the Nativity story. Rather than accepting the traditional images that define our December decorations, he asks questions many are too hesitant to voice: Are the Gospel accounts historically reliable? Did the virgin birth actually happen? Can we trust the ancient prophecies that point to the Messiah?

“What I discovered,” Strobel told me, “is that the Christmas story isn’t a sentimental legend — it’s a report rooted in history.” He spoke of archaeological findings that affirm details in Luke’s account, the early dating of eyewitness material, and the surprising strength of prophetic evidence pointing to Jesus as the long-awaited Messiah.

Strobel’s investigative journey reminded me of my own. Like him, I didn’t arrive at faith through emotion or tradition. I came by asking hard questions — and finding, to my surprise, the answers were sturdier than my doubts.

This Christmas, as our homes fill with lights and music, Strobel invites readers to look beyond the manger scene and consider the reality of the child lying in it. If the evidence truly points to Jesus as more than a teacher or prophet — if he is indeed humanity’s savior — then Christmas is not merely a beautiful story. It is the moment when hope stepped into human history.