Today, I want to talk about a claim that shows up every Christmas season, especially online: the idea that Jesus, Mary, and Joseph were refugees — that they were undocumented migrants escaping a hostile government, and that the Nativity somehow maps onto modern U.S. immigration politics. It’s an idea repeated so often that it feels unquestionable. But once you look at the world they actually lived in, the analogy collapses instantly.

To understand the Flight into Egypt, you have to understand Rome. Not Rome as a distant city, but Rome as a system — the political world the Holy Family lived inside. Rome wasn’t divided into separate nations with visas and passports and immigration systems. It was a unified empire, more like the continental United States than anything else. Judea and Egypt weren’t foreign countries. They were Roman jurisdictions. Moving between them was internal movement, not crossing a border.

That’s the first thing modern people miss. The Holy Family didn’t leave their country. They didn’t enter a foreign state. They didn’t become stateless or undocumented. They were Roman subjects everywhere they went, protected by the same imperial authority that governed the entire region.

Now yes, Rome had borders — real borders, violent borders. When people tried to enter the empire from the outside, Rome enforced those boundaries with an iron fist. Caesar’s armies blocked outsiders, pushed back tribes, and made sure that entry into the empire happened only on Rome’s terms. In that sense, Caesar actually behaved more like a modern head of state than people realize. He controlled who entered the empire. He didn’t control internal movement.

And that’s exactly where the analogy to modern refugee policy breaks. When Joseph took Mary and the infant Jesus to Egypt after receiving the angel’s warning, they didn’t present themselves at a checkpoint. They didn’t apply for refuge. They didn’t cross into a sovereign foreign nation. They simply went from one part of Rome to another part of Rome.

If you want a modern parallel, you don’t look at asylum seekers crossing into the U.S. You look at internal displacement inside the U.S. itself. Think of the Dust Bowl migrants who fled drought and famine by heading west. Think of the Great Migration, when Black Americans fled Jim Crow violence and resettled in northern cities. Think of families uprooted by hurricanes and moving across state lines for safety. These were dramatic, traumatic movements — but they weren’t refugee movements. They were internal migrations.

And that is exactly where the Holy Family fits. Their flight was driven by danger, but it didn’t change their political or legal status. They weren’t outsiders. They weren’t undocumented. They weren’t in violation of any law. They were moving within their own world.

So why do we keep reframing the Nativity as a refugee story? Because it serves a modern narrative. It gives people a moral shorthand. It lets contemporary political debates borrow the emotional power of a sacred story. But the history doesn’t support the analogy, and neither does the geography.

This isn’t about rejecting compassion or undermining anyone’s convictions. It’s about accuracy. The Holy Family’s flight isn’t an ancient version of modern asylum. It’s an internal relocation under threat, inside the same empire.

As we hear the familiar Christmas commentary this year, we can appreciate the moral impulse behind the analogy — but we should also acknowledge the reality. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph were not refugees. They were Roman subjects reacting to a local threat, not crossing a foreign border into a foreign country. Their story is dramatic, moving, and sacred — but it isn’t a blueprint for modern immigration policy.

Welcome back. Today we’re taking on a Christmas claim that resurfaces every year: that Jesus, Mary, and Joseph were refugees, undocumented migrants, or ancient asylum-seekers. It’s emotionally appealing, politically useful, and completely incompatible with the world the Nativity took place in.

To understand why, we have to put aside modern nation-states and step into Rome. Rome wasn’t a patchwork of countries. It was a unified imperial world, more like a continental-scale United States than anything else in antiquity. Judea and Egypt were not separate nations. They were Roman jurisdictions. Moving between them was like moving from one state to another, not crossing an international border.

And that’s the heart of it: the Holy Family never left their own political system. They never crossed into foreign territory. They never became stateless. They never occupied any category resembling “undocumented.” They were lawful Roman subjects everywhere they went.

Now, Rome did have borders — fierce ones. Caesar defended the external edges of the empire with levels of force modern governments wouldn’t dream of using. Unauthorized groups approaching Rome from outside were blocked, repelled, or crushed. In that sense, Caesar absolutely behaved like a modern head of state securing a national border. But none of that applied to people already inside the empire. Rome didn’t deport internal subjects for moving from one province to another. There was no immigration system for internal movement because internal movement didn’t require permission.

So when Joseph took Mary and the infant Jesus to Egypt after receiving a divine warning, they weren’t entering a foreign country or seeking asylum. They weren’t applying for refuge. They weren’t presenting themselves to a host government. They were relocating inside the only political world they belonged to.

If we want analogies, the closest modern parallels come from American internal displacement, not international refugee movements. Think of Dust Bowl families fleeing starvation and drought by heading to California. Think of the Great Migration, when millions of Black Americans fled racial terror in the South and rebuilt their lives in northern cities. Think of families uprooted by hurricanes or wildfires and moving across state lines. These were dramatic, sometimes desperate relocations. But they weren’t refugees under law. They were citizens moving inside a single national system.

The Holy Family fits this pattern far better than the refugee framework we keep projecting onto them. Their story is about danger, intervention, and survival — but not about crossing a border into a foreign land.

So why do we keep forcing the Nativity into modern immigration politics? Because the analogy is emotionally powerful. Casting Jesus as an undocumented child and Herod as the voice of border enforcement gives modern debates a moral clarity many people crave. But it rests on a misunderstanding of both worlds: Rome and our own.

Rome enforced external borders. The United States enforces external borders. But Jesus, Mary, and Joseph were never on the wrong side of those borders. They were not outsiders seeking entry. They were insiders seeking safety. Their legal status never changed. Their political identity never changed. Their movement never triggered anything resembling asylum, deportation, or refugee law.

This isn’t about shutting down compassion. It’s about keeping the historical record intact and resisting the urge to retrofit sacred stories into modern political frameworks. The Nativity is many things — a theological hinge, a confrontation with violence, a narrative of protection — but it is not an immigration parable.

Thanks for listening. For sources, notes, and the full written version, check the show notes.

Discussions about the birth of Jesus often include the assertion that Jesus, Mary, and Joseph were refugees fleeing persecution. This framing is intended to connect the biblical story to contemporary global crises and highlight empathy for displaced people. While the intention may be understandable, the historical circumstances of the Holy Family do not align with the modern category of refugee status as defined by law, borders, and international recognition.

In the first century, the Eastern Mediterranean was not divided into nation-states. It operated under one imperial authority: Rome. Judea, the birthplace of Jesus, was ruled by Herod the Great as a client king under Roman oversight. Egypt, where the Gospel of Matthew records that the family traveled, was a Roman province governed directly by imperial administration. Movement from Judea to Egypt was therefore not a departure from one country into another, nor did it require permission, documentation, or protection from a foreign sovereign power.

The journey to Bethlehem, prompted by the census described in the Gospel of Luke, was not migration at all. It was internal travel for administrative purposes, a reality familiar across the empire for those subject to taxation and bureaucratic recordkeeping.

The subsequent flight to Egypt described in Matthew was a response to danger, specifically the threat posed by Herod’s directive to kill infant boys in Bethlehem. This reflects urgency and real risk, but urgency alone does not make the Holy Family refugees in the modern sense. A refugee, in contemporary legal terms, is a person who crosses an internationally recognized boundary and receives acknowledgment or protection from another state. Many people flee danger without ever being recognized as refugees; they are displaced, endangered, or in flight, but not legally categorized under that term.

Another key element distinguishing this narrative from typical migration or displacement is the presence of explicit spiritual and supernatural agency. Herod’s actions are portrayed as a response to prophecy. Joseph’s decision is directed by a dream in which an angel provides instruction. The narrative presents a specific threat against a specific child, rather than a generalized persecution of an entire population. The movement was personal, not collective. It was prompted by divine warning, not legal petition, social negotiation, or state-to-state appeal.

Understanding these distinctions does not diminish the gravity or significance of the story. Instead, it preserves the historical and spiritual context in which it occurred. Using modern terminology to describe ancient events may blur rather than clarify the meaning of the narrative, substituting contemporary categories for ancient realities.

The account of the Holy Family’s journey remains important without translation into the language of modern policy. It is a narrative of faith, danger, obedience, and protection. It illustrates vulnerability met with guidance, threat met with trust, and uncertainty met with action. Its power does not depend on its alignment with contemporary refugee frameworks; its significance rests in the world it emerged from and the faith it continues to inspire.