Today is Christmas Eve, and millions of us are preparing to celebrate that most wonderful of days, some of us having no idea why or what it is truly all about. Why is this story so popular, and why has it captivated us for all of these centuries? The truth is, the Christmas story may be about the coming of God’s son to save all of our souls for eternity, but at its heart it is also a relatable tale about some people who were not very different from us.
To start out with you have Joseph. His girlfriend is pregnant, and you just know his family is not happy about this, and to top it off, the baby isn’t even his. Sure, he thinks about breaking up with her, but she tells him that it is actually God’s baby, and the holy spirit put it there, so he better not even think about breaking up with her. This was a great excuse! Nobody had ever thought of this excuse before, even though it would be used by many young women for years afterward, including that one girl you knew from high school and Shmi Skywalker.
What could Joseph do in the face of such a crazy story, but believe it? And it didn’t hurt that an angel told him to be cool either. So there are Joseph and Mary, a couple of kids from Nazareth, just trying to make it on a carpenter’s salary (and there were no unions in Nazareth, it was strictly a right-to-work kind of place), and suddenly they find out that they have to go out of town.
The crazy emperor has passed some sort of new big government initiative that is infringing on people’s freedom and privacy, so all citizens are suddenly required to go back to their hometowns and get registered for some suspicious sounding new thing called a census. Well, Joseph posted a few angry messages about this on Facebook, and swore that he would never vote for another Roman again, but it was no use. He and Mary got on their used donkeys and started off on the long trip to Bethlehem.
The traffic was terrible. It was Christmas Eve for goodness sake, and everyone was traveling! Not only that, but Mary was unable to get any 3G service with all of the dunes and hills around, so she couldn’t confirm their reservation at the inn that they were supposed to be staying at, so by the time they got there, late because Joseph’s donkey got a flat hoof just outside of Tel-Aviv, their room had already been given away and they had no place to stay.
Oh, Joseph argued with the jerk at the counter for almost an hour, while poor embarrassed Mary begged him to drop it and just find another inn, but it was no use. And by the time they finally got out of there, all of the other inns were full too. Mary, who was super pregnant at this point, wanted nothing more than to find anywhere to crash so she could sit by the pool and have an Arnold Palmer, and finally told Joseph to start asking about alternative accommodations. As it turns out, there was some room in a stable behind one of the inns, so that’s where they ended up.
Well Joseph is not having a very good vacation at this point. He’s hot, he’s tired, instead of his nice inn room with free HBO he is out back sleeping with livestock, and now Mary wants peanut butter ice cream, but every place is closed because it’s Christmas Eve, and right when the two of them are about to really get into it, Mary goes into labor.
Suddenly, none of that other stuff matters any more. Joseph rushes to help Mary lie down, and he lays her down in the hay where the animals had lain just moments before. Once he had laid her down, he tries to get her OB-GYN on the phone, but it’s late on a holiday weekend and the guy is in Nazareth anyway, so what did Joseph think he was going to be able to do from there? No, there is no help coming, so just after midnight Joseph delivers the baby himself, right there in the stable. A Christmas miracle.
They don’t have a crib, so they stick baby Jesus in the manger, which is actually pretty comfortable I’ve heard. At least they had remembered to pack the swaddling clothes, so the baby was warm and cozy. Joseph and Mary finally sit back and look at each other, smiling and hardly able to believe that they are parents, and thankful that the day is finally over and they can get some sleep. That is when the long line of sheep and people show up to say hi to their new baby.
I’ve definitely had days like that before, minus the giving birth to the son of God part. Long hard days where everything seems to go wrong, and you do the best you can with what you have. That’s life. That’s what life is, and in the midst of living their lives something divine touches Mary and Joseph and changes them forever. That’s why the Christmas story is our story too. It is a celebration of light and life and hope and new birth in the midst of darkness and trouble. This Christmas thing is infectious because it’s a feeling, and story, that all of us can share, even when we don’t completely understand it or even believe in it. So I wish you all a Merry Christmas, and may your story also be one of brightness and hope this coming year.