A couple of years ago, I put together a collection of approaches that can be taken to begin an argument for a traditional Christian view of Jesus' childhood. I've added more material to the post since then. You can find it here.
An important topic to inform yourself about is how much Matthew and Luke agree concerning the childhood of Jesus. They agree more than people typically suggest. See the post here for forty examples of the agreements between Matthew and Luke. For a discussion of the agreements among other early sources, see here.
Isaiah 9:1-7 is significant in the context of Christmas for a lot of reasons (Jesus' self-perception, demonstrating continuity between the accounts of his childhood and the accounts of his adulthood, etc.). Here's a collection of posts addressing the passage.
We've also addressed many other Christmas issues over the years. For example:
Christmas Prophecy Fulfillment
The Origins Of The Christmas Holiday And Its December 25 Date
Is it inappropriate to celebrate Christmas?
Was Luke 1-2 part of the original gospel of Luke?
How The Names Of Jesus And His Brothers Corroborate The Infancy Narratives
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
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?
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
All of our posts with the Christmas label can be found here. 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 (Virgin Birth, Luke's Census, etc.).
I placed the text of Matthew and Luke's infancy narratives in a couple of posts and attached links to the text that will take you to relevant material in our archives. See here for Matthew and here for Luke.
We've reviewed 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. A collection of responses to the book can be found here.
Here's a collection of my responses to skeptical misrepresentations of the church fathers. Some of them are closely related to Christmas.
On the importance of apologetics in general, not just in the context of Christmas, see this post. And here's one about the neglect of Christmas apologetics.
Here 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
2023
Following the 2023 post linked above, I discussed what some early Ephesian sources tell us about Jesus' childhood, contrary to the popular notion that there's little early interest in the subject outside the infancy narratives. I then wrote about the evidence for the virgin birth, in anticipation of an upcoming webinar by Bart Ehrman. And I linked a collection of ancient Christian orations on Christmas. Another post discussed how the names of Jesus and his brothers corroborate the infancy narratives. After that, I addressed the claim that Luke 1:34 suggests Mary took a vow of perpetual virginity. I also wrote a response to some claims Tovia Singer made about the origins of belief in the virgin birth. My next post responded to Bart Ehrman's webinar against the virgin birth, including his hypothesis that almost all of Luke 1-2 was a later addition to the gospel. Another post discussed some evidence that many people in the context in which the gospel of Matthew was written would have known that the two years mentioned in Matthew 2:16 is much longer than the magi would have needed to travel to Bethlehem. And here's a post about further evidence that the Nazareth location of the conception of Jesus wouldn't have been fabricated. Here's a collection of links to our posts on prophecy fulfillment related to Christmas. Another post addressed the connections between Christmas and Easter in the context of prophecy. After that, I responded to a video from the Religion For Breakfast YouTube channel arguing against Jesus' Bethlehem birthplace. My next post discussed some themes of Genesis 28 reflected in Jesus' life, including in the Christmas context. And here's something on how Jesus' identification as the figure of Isaiah 9 best explains the references to "the Sea of Galilee" in three of the gospels. I wrote a post about corroboration of the New Testament in the earliest extrabiblical sources, and some of the examples discussed there are from the context of Christmas. I also responded to a new book on the origins of the Christmas holiday. Here's a response to the book's argument that we don't know of any sources who commemorated Jesus' birth on December 25 before the Council of Nicaea. And here's a post quoting some good portions of the book arguing that paganism didn't have any significant influence on how the holiday originated. Following that, I linked some videos that address the origins of the holiday.
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