The Shawn Ryan Show
#265 Lee Strobel - Who is the Real Santa Claus & What Evidence Connects Jesus to Christmas?
25 Dec 2025
Chapter 1: What is discussed at the start of this section?
Lee Strobel, welcome back. Thank you. And Merry Christmas.
You too. Thanks for... I wore red. I see.
I should have thought about this a little bit more. That's all right. It's not actually Christmas yet, but... Well, yeah, well. But, well, Lee, we had you last year for Christmas. Yeah. And that was the first time we met. It was, yeah. And then we had you on for Easter with our mutual friend, John. And so... You got the new book coming out. Yeah, the case for Christmas.
So I thought, we got to do this again. Plus, I just love being around you and hanging out.
I love hanging out.
So this one will be all about Christmas and Jesus's birth and all that good stuff. Yeah. But I want to start off with an introduction, just like always. Yeah. Lee Strobel, a Christian author, speaker, and former investigative journalist.
You went from an atheist investigative journalist into leading Christian apologist and author, blending rigorous investigative methods with your faith journey to influence millions worldwide. New York Times bestselling offer of over 40 books and curricula with sales exceeding 18 million copies translated into 40 different languages.
Recently updated your book, The Case for Christmas, and Hobby Lobby has purchased one million copies and is giving them away for free.
Only half a million.
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Chapter 2: What is the significance of Lee Strobel's new book, The Case for Christmas?
Married to Leslie since 1972, and you have two adult children and four grandkids.
That's me. That's you. Can we go home now?
Yeah. But, you know, I just, like I said, I'm just happy to have you here again. And, you know, we were kind of talking at breakfast about, you know, the revival of Christianity. And I think we actually started talking about this a year ago. Yeah. Almost to the date, exactly. And how far it has come just in the past year. And you had some pretty interesting statistics.
There's actually a new survey done by the Barna organization that showed that among especially young people who have taken some sort of step as a result of the Charlie Kirk assassination, Far more of them, like three times as many, have taken a spiritual step versus a political step.
So I think it's something like 38% who took a step took a spiritual step, and like 11% took a political step, which to me is a fascinating phenomenon when you look at also Bible sales continue to be extremely high. When you look at how many young guys are going back to church, Young women are kind of leaving the church a bit right now, but it's young guys who are going to church.
This is very new. Very new, very exciting, I think.
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Chapter 3: What evidence supports the virgin birth of Jesus?
It's like God is kind of stirring the spiritual pot. Something's going on in the culture. Definitely. And I think it's a positive thing. I think especially Generation X and alphas, young people, they've been lied to so much. You know, AI, who knows what's true and what's not? You go on Twitter at X, you know, and you see this funny video, and then you realize, oh, it was artificial intelligence.
And, you know, television commercials just lie to you about things or mislead you. Radio commercials and politics has told you one thing when you know that ain't true. And I think a lot of young people get to the point where I'd like to base my life on something solid. I'd like to anchor it on something that's true.
And that's a good thing because I think, personally, my experience has been that's who Jesus is, and that's who we celebrate at Christmas.
I think that's, I mean, I think you're right on the money there with why this is all happening. And yeah, the younger generations are all coming back, but I see it in all the generations. I mean, I see it in the older folks and the folks my age and the younger generation. Everybody, at least everybody around me is talking about this and they're going back.
or they're going, or they're just initially going to church. Right, first time, going to church. And it's really, it's just really cool to see. And so once again, I mean, that's, I just, I learned so much from you guys. And I mean, this journey started for me, what, about,
two maybe three years ago ish i think it's about two years ago but you know and and even in this it's hard to find there's so many different opinions and different contexts on how you can take scripture and so And I've just learned so much from you and from John and my buddy Todd that I'm going to bring up again today. He's probably like, oh, shit, what am I going to say now?
And so I think it's just important. And so all these people are coming back to Christ or coming to Christ. And there's a lot of questions. And so I just, I think we don't all know where to look, but you're a great resource.
You know, yes, there are a lot of questions and that's a good thing. You know, I think a lot of people, especially people who are Christians, who are going to a church and they've got a question, they've got a doubt. They don't want to say anything because they're afraid, oh, you're going to think I don't have faith or you're going to look down your nose at me. And unfortunately, they hold it in.
And it's like a little kid. You know, when a little kid has a nightmare, he jumps out of bed and he runs into his parents' room and he jumps into bed and he's sweating and his heart's pounding and they say, what's wrong? What's wrong? Oh, I had this dream, this horrible dream. He said, well, tell us about the dream.
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Chapter 4: How do the Magi's gifts foreshadow Jesus' purpose?
So through this kind of cryptic type way, right? Is that a prophecy right there?
It is a prophecy. You're exactly right. A female child has two X chromosomes. A male child has an X and a Y chromosome. The Y comes from the male. And so in order for Mary to give birth to a male child, she would have to have a Y chromosome in her ovum. How did that happen? She wouldn't have, she just had two Xs. She would not have the male, the Y chromosome.
So how can it come from the seed of a woman with, how does she get a Y chromosome? Well, this was a big problem for one of the main, biggest defenders of Christianity in the world, two earned PhDs. His name is Dr. William Lane Craig.
Dr. Craig doubted the virgin birth because he said, Mary can't give birth to a male child without a literal husband having sex with her because she doesn't have the Y chromosome. So it bothered him. And then he said, oh, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Scientists all around the world now agree the universe began to exist at some point in the past.
Therefore, whatever begins to exist has a cause behind it. We now know the universe began to exist, so there must be a cause behind the universe. What kind of a cause can bring a universe into existence? It must be transcendent or separate from creation. It must be immaterial or spirit because it existed before the physical world.
It must be eternal or timeless because it existed before time came into being, physical time at the creation. It must be powerful given the immensity of the creation event. It must be smart given the precision of the creation event. Must be personal because they had to make the decision to create. Must be creative because look at the beauty of the cosmos.
Must be loving because he crafted such a perfect habitat for us to flourish in. And the Occam's Razor, which is a scientific principle, tells us it would be just one creator. That is a description, transcendent, immaterial, powerful. That is a description of the God of the Bible. And so he said, wait a minute.
If God created all that there is for him to create a Y chromosome in Mary, supernaturally, would be child's play. And he overcame that objection he had to the, how could Mary have given birth to a male child without the Y chromosome? So it was from the seed of Mary as opposed from a male contribution to the genetics of the child. So God could create genetic code. He can create the Y chromosome.
That's nothing compared to the creation of the cosmos, which is unbelievable. So that kind of satisfied for him sort of the possibility that God could have pulled this off.
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Chapter 5: Who was the first to recognize Jesus as the Messiah?
So the first person ever to recognize Jesus being a Messiah was an unborn child. By the name of John. Wow. But that's it. So it wasn't God or any of these other... Joseph knew because an angel appeared to Joseph and told him what was going on. So Joseph knew. Now, who they told and who they led into this, I don't know. But it was...
There was a probably small group that understood what was going on. Now, how fast do you think the word spread? Oh, it spread fast. When the shepherds came in, it says they ran into Bethlehem when the angel told them that the Messiah is now born in the city of David. And it says they ran into town to check it out themselves. And they checked it out themselves. They found him and so forth.
And it says they were telling everybody.
um hey guess what uh so there was a the news started now we didn't have the internet of course back then so news news spread a little slower than it does today but um but the news was getting out so they so it was it was it was them it was the it was the shepherds it was the shepherds that spread the word they were they were starting to tell people but there was no there was no nobody knew
anything other than what the shepherds were spreading?
Probably not. Thinking back, I mean, certainly when King Herod was told by his advisors that the child would be born in Bethlehem, that news began to spread around Jerusalem. Because it upset Herod. Who told him that? His advisors, his Jewish advisors.
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Chapter 6: How did the news of Jesus's birth spread?
When the Magi came and said, hey, we're looking for the king of the Jews. Where is he? And they figured maybe Jerusalem, right? And Herod says, hold on a minute. Gets his Jewish advisors and says, where is the king of Jews going to be born? Bethlehem, OK. And then he's the one that told the Magi, go to Bethlehem. And they saw the star that confirmed it.
How do the advisors know? Is this from?
Because of Micah chapter 5, verse 2. Really? Yeah, the ancient prophecy. They studied these prophecies. They knew them. They lived by them. And they were living in anticipation that the Messiah would come. Daniel, the prophet Daniel. So did the advisors think this was a bad thing?
No, they probably would have been excited, I'm guessing, that these magi are coming and looking for, yeah, because it's like, they were Jewish. So the only hatred for Jesus that Herod had was for a power struggle. It was a power struggle. Herod was afraid that he would grow up and usurp his throne. Humans addicted to power. That's right. And Herod was a, he was crazy. and ill at the time.
He was not doing well. He didn't have a long time to live. He had killed relatives. He'd killed all kinds of people. He was a ruthless, bloodthirsty person. And he had, I mean, just to order the destruction of these children. No problem. Let's get rid of him that way. But an angel had warned Mary and Joseph, hey, don't go back to Nazareth yet.
Go to Egypt and hang out for a while until things settle down with Herod. And that's what they did.
Where was... Jesus throughout his childhood. I mean, we don't know anything.
We don't know a lot. We don't know a lot. There's some apocryphal literature that suggests that he went off to India. There's some stories about him being in India. They're not well supported. We don't know. And I think the reason we don't know is it's not really ultimately important. It says he continued to grow in wisdom. So we know that that took place.
We know his father died at some point before he got too old.
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Chapter 7: What role did King Herod play in the story of Jesus's early life?
And he was probably very busy being a carpenter himself, no doubt. But I think because the scriptures don't really go into that detail, it's probably because, man, It's really not that important what he was doing. But people have tried to fill it in through the years. So you see some of these stories that will pop up in what's called non-canonical. In other words, it's not- Very far-fetched.
Yeah, kind of far-fetched stuff. There's one far-fetched story. One of the stories about Christmas is that Mary was on the verge of giving birth as she's arriving in Bethlehem. Um, we don't know that. Uh, Luke says while they were in Bethlehem, the baby was born. Doesn't say five minutes, doesn't say five days, doesn't say five weeks or five months. We don't know how long she was there.
So it wasn't a big rush to get to Bethlehem for, We don't know. There was a book of fiction that was written in 200 AD, so that's like a couple hundred years later, that has no connection to the eyewitnesses. And in that book of fiction, it was called the Protoevangelium of James. It had no connection to James or anybody. It was just fictional.
And in that account, it says that Mary and Joseph got within three miles of Bethlehem, and the baby was coming. So they went into a cave. and gave birth in a cave among the animals in the cave. That's where this idea that some think about of giving birth in a cave, that's where that came from. It's a book of fiction. It has no historical validity. So that didn't really happen.
But the biggest mistake in terms of historical understanding of Christmas boils down to one word. One word in the Greek and how it gets translated or mistranslated. Here's the typical story we hear at Christmas. Mary and Joseph, because of the census, had to go to Bethlehem to be counted in the census because he was of the house of David.
So they go to Bethlehem, and Mary's pregnant, and she's getting close to giving birth. They knock on the door of an inn or a lodge, and the innkeeper opens the door and says, hey, no room, sorry. She closes the door. What are they going to do? They go off into a stable. And they give birth among the animals in the stable.
And then she lays the baby in the clean hay of a manger or a feeding trough. That's the typical story you hear. It all depends on one word. And the Greek word is katalima. And how is that? Because here's what Luke says, and this is how all this comes about. Luke says, when the baby was born, he was put into a manger because there was no room for them in the catalima.
King James Version translated that word as inn. Some other early writings translate it as inn, but that's probably not the correct translation. Luke only uses the word katalima one other time in his gospel. When he does, it's referring to a room in a residence. When he was referring to an inn or a lodge, he used another word, pandohaion. He doesn't use that here. He uses katalima.
Well, what was a katalima? Well, you have to understand what a house looked like in the first century Jewish culture in Bethlehem. A house was one big room divided into two parts. There was the bigger part, and that was the living area where the family would live and sleep and cook and so forth.
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