At the heart of the Christmas story rests some important lessons
concerning free enterprise, government, and the role of wealth in society.
Let’s begin with one of the most famous phrases: “There’s no room at the
inn.” This phrase is often invoked as if it were a cruel and heartless
dismissal of the tired travelers Joseph and Mary. Many renditions of the
story conjure up images of the couple going from inn to inn only to have the
owner barking at them to go away and slamming the door.
In fact, the inns were full to overflowing in the entire Holy Land because
of the Roman emperor’s decree that everyone be counted and taxed. Inns are
private businesses, and customers are their lifeblood. There would have been
no reason to turn away this man of royal lineage and his beautiful, expectant
bride.
In any case, the second chapter of St. Luke doesn’t say that they were
continually rejected at place after place. It tells of the charity of a
single inn owner, perhaps the first person they encountered, who, after all,
was a businessman. His inn was full, but he offered them what he had: the
stable. There is no mention that the innkeeper charged the couple even one
copper coin, though given his rights as a property owner, he certainly could
have. 
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And yet we don’t even know the innkeeper’s name. In two thousand years of
celebrating Christmas, tributes today to the owner of the inn are absent.
Such is the fate of the merchant throughout all history: doing well, doing
good, and forgotten for his service to humanity. It’s remarkable, then, to
think that when the Word was made flesh with the birth of Jesus, it was
through the intercessory work of a private businessman. Without his
assistance, the story would have been very different indeed. People complain
about the “commercialization” of Christmas, but clearly commerce was there
from the beginning, playing an essential and laudable role.
Clearly, if there was a room shortage, it was an unusual event and brought
about through some sort of market distortion. After all, if there had been
frequent shortages of rooms in Bethlehem, entrepreneurs would have noticed
that there were profits to be made by addressing this systematic problem, and
built more inns.
Moving on in the story, we come to Three Kings, also called Wise Men. Talk
about a historical anomaly for both to go together! Most kings behaved like
the Roman Emperor’s local enforcer, Herod. Not only did he order
people to leave their homes and foot the bill for travel so that they
could be taxed. Herod was also a liar: he told the Wise Men that he wanted to
find Jesus so that he could “come and adore Him.” In fact, Herod wanted to
kill Him. Hence, another lesson: you can’t trust a political hack to tell the
truth. It was because of a government decree that Mary and Joseph, and so
many others like them, were traveling in the first place. They had to be
uprooted for fear of the emperor’s census workers and tax collectors. And
consider the costs of slogging all the way “from Galilee, out of the city of
Nazareth, into Judea, unto the city of David,” not to speak of the
opportunity costs Joseph endured having to leave his own business. Thus
we have another lesson: government’s use of coercive dictates distort the
market. 
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Once having found the Holy Family, what gifts did the Wise Men bring? Not
soup and sandwiches, but “gold, frankincense, and myrrh.” These were the most
rare items obtainable in that world in those times, and they must have
commanded a very high market price.
Far from rejecting them as extravagant, the Holy Family accepted them as
gifts worthy of the Divine Messiah. Neither is there a record that suggests
that the Holy Family paid any capital gains tax on them, though such gifts
vastly increased their net wealth. Hence, another lesson: there is nothing
immoral about wealth; wealth is something to be valued, owned privately,
given and exchanged.
When
the Wise Men and the Holy Family got word of Herod’s plans to kill the
newborn Son of God, did they submit? Not at all. The Wise Men, being wise,
snubbed Herod and “went back another way” – taking their lives in their hands
(Herod conducted a furious search for them later). As for Mary and Joseph, an
angel advised Joseph to “take the child and his mother, and fly into Egypt.”
In short, they resisted. Lesson number four: the angels are on the side of
those who resist government.
In the Gospel narratives, the role of private enterprise, and the evil of
government power, only begin there. Jesus used commercial examples in his
parables (e.g., laborers in the vineyard, the parable of the talents) and
made it clear that he had come to save even such reviled sinners as tax
collectors.
And just as His birth was facilitated by the owner of an “inn,” the same
Greek word “kataluma” is employed to describe the location of the Last Supper
before Jesus was crucified by the government. Thus, private enterprise was
there from birth, through life, and to death, providing a refuge of safety
and productivity, just as it has in our time.
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