For suggestions about how to begin the process of arguing for a traditional Christian view of Jesus' childhood, see the collection of approaches that can be taken here.
One of the most important issues to inform yourself about is how much Matthew and Luke agree concerning Jesus' childhood. They agree much more than people typically suggest. See here for a discussion of forty examples of the agreements between Matthew and Luke. For a collection of posts on agreement about Jesus' childhood among other early sources, see here.
Isaiah 9:1-7 is important not only in the context of prophecy fulfillment, but also for other reasons, such as understanding Jesus' self-perception, demonstrating continuity between the accounts of his childhood and the accounts of his adulthood, and understanding why he carried out his public ministry as he did. Here's a collection of posts addressing the passage and its significance across many contexts.
And we've addressed a lot of other Christmas issues over the years. Here are some examples:
Why not dismiss ancient accounts of Jesus' childhood the same way we dismiss ancient accounts of the childhood of gods, emperors, etc.?
How Jesus' Relatives Shaped Our View Of His Childhood
Luke's Use Of James The Brother Of Jesus As A Source
Does the gospel of Mark contradict the infancy narratives?
Luke 2:39 Doesn't Mean What Critics Claim It Means
The Consistency And Historicity Of The Annunciation Accounts
Do passages like Matthew 2:1, 2:11, 2:22-23, and Luke 2:39 prove that the infancy narratives are inconsistent?
A Geographical Argument For Christmas
Jesus' Galilean Background And Its Significance
The Significance Of Jesus' Being Raised In Nazareth
Capernaum And Christmas
How much can we trust ancient Christian sources in consideration of their biases?
Written Sources On Jesus' Childhood Prior To The New Testament
The Earliness Of Matthew And Luke
The Authorship Of Matthew
The Authorship Of Luke
The Genre Of The Infancy Narratives
Typology And The Infancy Narratives
Whether Matthew Derived His Material On Jesus' Childhood From His Old Testament Citations
Material Against Luke's Interest In Luke 1-2
Jesus' Childhood In John 7-9
The Significance Of 1 Timothy 5:18
The Historicity Of Luke's Census
The Slaughter Of The Innocents
The Virgin Birth
The Mechanism For The Virgin Birth: Joseph's Biological Relationship With Jesus
Jesus' Davidic Ancestry And The Genealogies
Evidence For The Bethlehem Birthplace
The Star Of Bethlehem
Evidence For The Magi
Mutually Exclusive Skeptical Claims About Christmas
The Origins Of The Christmas Holiday And Its December 25 Date
Is it inappropriate to celebrate Christmas?
For an archive of all of our posts with the Christmas label, go here. You can click Older Posts at the bottom of the screen to see more. If you replace "Christmas" in the URL linked above with another relevant phrase, you can find the posts that are labeled that way (Star of Bethlehem, Luke's Census, etc.).
I've placed the text of Matthew and Luke's infancy narratives in a couple of posts and have attached links to the text that will take you to relevant material in our archives. See here for Matthew and here for Luke. I updated both posts earlier this year, so both include links to some newer material in some places.
We've written reviews of some Christmas-related books. Here's a collection of those reviews, including links to reviews posted at other sites, such as Amazon.
Raymond Brown's book on the infancy narratives is still widely considered the standard in the field. Here's a collection of responses to that book.
And here's a collection of my responses to skeptical misrepresentations of the church fathers, some of which are relevant to Christmas issues.
For a discussion of the importance of apologetics in general, not just in the context of Christmas, see here. And here's a post about the neglect of Christmas apologetics in particular.
The following are links to my Christmas Resources posts of previous years:
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
2021
2022
After the 2022 collection linked above, I posted an article about how Jesus' relatives influenced our view of his childhood. The post includes a discussion of several lines of evidence that Luke had Jesus' brother James as one of his sources. My next post discussed the Slaughter of the Innocents and the argument from silence, particularly the objection that Josephus doesn't mention the Slaughter. I began a series of posts suggesting various concise ways Christians can begin making a case for a traditional Christian view of Jesus' childhood. The first post in the series was about how Jesus' childhood would have been memorable in some ways, more memorable than critics sometimes suggest, even without taking the miracles involved into account. The second post in the series addressed two aspects of a traditional Christian view of the childhood of Jesus that critics often accept, the timing and location of his conception. The third post discussed the value of starting with a focus on Nazareth rather than Bethlehem. The next one addressed how to argue for Matthew's account of the star of Bethlehem. I then linked these four posts and some others of a similar nature in one place. Another post discussed agreement among a few of the New Testament sources that John the Baptist had a significant amount of knowledge about Jesus' childhood. The post also addresses the implications that follow for the efforts of Raymond Brown and others to drive a wedge between the infancy narratives and the accounts of Jesus' adulthood. I linked some videos by Michael Jones about the alleged pagan origins of Christmas traditions. In another post, I addressed the likely existence of written sources prior to the letters of Paul and the gospels that contained information on Jesus' childhood. I then discussed how the timing of Mary's return to Nazareth in Luke 1:56 makes sense and aligns well with Matthew's material on the childhood of Jesus. Tom Holland made some highly skeptical claims about the events surrounding Jesus' birth on a podcast just before Christmas. I wrote a response and linked another response from Glen Scrivener and Peter Williams. I later quoted some comments from John Piper about the historical impact of Jesus and his birth. And here's a collection of resources on Isaiah 9. Another post linked a video by Michael Jones that addresses alleged parallels between Christianity and other belief systems, an objection that often comes up in the context of Christmas. And here's a post I wrote about alleged parallels. In another post, I summarized the evidence for the credibility of Jesus' relatives as witnesses.
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