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I wrote this last Christmas, filed it and some­how didn’t get around to post­ing it until now. When it got around to Advent again, I remem­bered this piece I had writ­ten and decided to post it now that it’s get­ting close enough to Christmas.

I got to think­ing last night [Christmas Eve] as my father read us the Christmas story. He gath­ered my lit­tle broth­ers around his feet and read the account from Luke. To clar­ify a point, he rephrased a line or two into mod­ern terms for my lit­tle broth­ers: “So when Mary and Joseph got there to Bethlehem, the hotel was full. They didn’t know where to stay, but they said they could stay back in the sta­ble, where every­one parked their don­keys and horses.” Listening to this, I thought back on the story. I think about the true mean­ing of Christmas far more than a lot of peo­ple, and I am cer­tainly famil­iar with the story back­wards and for­wards, but do we really think about the way it was? We set up our Nativity scenes, we hang a star on our porch and can­dles in the win­dow, but do we really know what it must have been like? Even the sta­ble, rough accom­mo­da­tion as it was, is always painted in a rosy glow. Mary had to have her baby out back in the stable—in mod­ern terms, in the park­ing garage. What was it like—not if it hap­pened now, for it didn’t, and the Lord had his rea­sons for send­ing Christ when he did—but how would it have sounded to a first-century Jew who was hear­ing the story for the first time, trans­lated culturally?

“Mary and Joseph lived some­where out West, but had to come back home for some press­ing rea­son. But all they had to drive was a motor­cy­cle, so Mary rode behind Joseph nine-months preg­nant all the way back home. When they got here, the hotels were all full, so they were told they could stay in the park­ing garage in case a room opened up. That night Mary had her baby, in the cold, in the garage, with only the blan­kets and coats that they had with them. That same night, the grave­yard shift work­ers at the mill down the road went out to take a cig­a­rette break behind the build­ing and had quite a sur­prise! They dashed back through the plant on their way down­town, shout­ing some story about see­ing an angel cho­rus out behind the mill. When they went to each of the hos­pi­tals and hotels down­town, they couldn’t find any­one who knew about a baby being born that night. They finally remem­bered the sec­ond part of the mes­sage and found Mary and Joseph in the garage. A few nights later, three strange men from Central Asia flew into town. They couldn’t speak very good English, but they man­aged to find the governor’s man­sion up by the state capi­tol. They left there after a report­edly stormy con­fer­ence with the gov­er­nor and got back in their rental car, which was stuffed to the win­dows with lug­gage, and drove straight to a hotel room on the 7^th floor of the biggest hotel in town, oddly enough the one Mary and Joseph–and the baby–had received after that ter­ri­ble night in the park­ing garage. There they seemed to find what they were look­ing for, for they left on the next flight out for Kazakhstan.”

No, it’s not par­al­lel. God didn’t send His Son for Christmas 2006, and I for one am glad He chose to send Him when He did. But does it make you think? Do you feel sorry for poor Mary, stuck in a park­ing garage giv­ing birth to her first child? The hourly work­ers from the mill had an unbe­liev­able story—why would an angel appear to some guys smok­ing out behind the plant?–what HAD they been smok­ing? Who told the three men from the East that a baby would be found in a park­ing garage down­town? Apparently they left home even before Mary and Joseph arrived back home!

I thought y’all would like that. It really struck me just how amaz­ing this story must have sounded to the first-century Jews to whom Bethlehem, Jerusalem, and Judea; the inn and even the sta­ble were famil­iar real­ity, not just an ethe­real, faintly-remembered story con­nected in their minds with fruit­cake and orna­ments on a tree. May the intense REALITY of Christmas, when the Maker of the Heavens came down to be born, incar­nated as a frail, human child to bring us sal­va­tion, fill your hearts and minds this Christmas sea­son and on through the year!