TV REVIEWS : Two Shows Offer Untraditional Christmas Theories

One of the most beautiful Christmas songs is “We Three Kings”--the majesty of which is possibly undermined only by the fact that the wise men said to have visited the infant Jesus weren’t kings, didn’t hail from the Orient and didn’t number three in any reliable source text other than the hymnal.

So much for pop music as a reflection of what’s really going on on the street.

This is among the revisionism of tradition in “The Life and Times of Jesus: The First Christmas,” one of two interesting Nativity-themed specials on the Learning Channel Sunday. This hour (airing at 6 and 11 p.m.) was co-produced by U.S. News & World Report, and offers “expert” theological and historical analyses--from scholars both skeptical and faithful--of what might have really happened when BC became AD.

It’s directly preceded (at 5 and 10 p.m.) by “Christmas Star,” a separate, English-made production that focuses more narrowly on possible scientific bases for the astronomical phenomena described in biblical texts. Both hours take pains to strike a balance and are likely to be well-regarded among Christians and agnostics alike--as opposed to the infamous sensationalism of the major networks’ specials from the Sun production company.

“The First Christmas” separates biblical accounts from the extrapolations of later traditions--making note, for example, that there is no New Testament mention of a stable, and that homes of the time often kept animals inside the house and had mangers built into the walls of ground-floor rooms.

Robert Funk, founder of the controversial Jesus Seminar, doesn’t even accept the birth accounts in the two Gospels that include them: “The stories are designed mostly to fit the (Old Testament) prophecies,” he maintains, playing grinch here, if you will. But evangelical and other less naysaying scholars are also on hand to assert partial or total historical veracity in the texts.

Well-illustrated with computer graphics of the cosmos, “Christmas Star” examines celestial happenings in the years immediately BC to try to pinpoint a date for Christ’s birth. It offers always inconclusive evidence for a half-dozen theories--including a nova, a supernova or a once-in-every-800-years “triple-tryst” convergence of Jupiter and Saturn--for the “star” so unusual that it led astronomically sophisticated Magi out of Babylon on a three- or four-month trek.

“Oh beautiful rare planetary conjunction of Bethlehem” may not have quite the same lyrical ring, but these two hours do effectively summarize critical data that all sides in the eternal miracle-or-no debate may find provocative.