As many of us go about the business of buying and wrapping gifts, gathering together our festive fair for the big dinner and making last minute preparations for the feast, we should stop to remember the greatest story ever told. If you are not familiar with this story or have perhaps forgotten, allow me to refresh your memory.
It all begun over 2000 years ago. God, who was all seeing and all powerful decided the time had come again to intervene and make an appearance on Earth, his only real achievement in life. He had appeared about 1400 years previously as a burning bush. Around about this time the Chinese had a pretty developed society and a formal written language that was in common use but for some reason he had chosen to appear as a tree in the Middle East where most of the population were illiterate goat herders. It went well and he gave Moses a list of 10 rules which seemed quite popular so he left them too it.
However in the 1400 years that had passed his message had been corrupted and things had gone a bit wrong so he decided it was finally time to come back and set things straight. Again, he could have chosen to appear to the Chinese who would have no doubt written things down and there would today be a definitive record, corroborated by multiple scribes, all of whom could have attested to the events that took place and the things he said. That would have cleared a lot of things up. But as I mentioned previously, God is all seeing and all knowing and he knows what's best. So he decided to stick with the illiterate goat herders who made such a mess of things previously. Also God is white and the locals were mostly brown but he knew it would probably be fine. Now..
God used his infinite wisdom and omnipotence and identified a young unmarried virgin who seemed the perfect candidate for him to impregnate by magic so that she could then give birth to him. Luckily, and against all odds her fiancé Joseph was totally cool about the whole thing so the game was set. Again, it doesn't make a massive amount of sense to me but he works in mysterious ways and knows everything so for some reason he decided it would be good if Mary gave birth in Winter during the first ever census so she would have to leave home and travel to Bethlehem, about 3-4 days journey on foot. So off they set for Bethlehem.
There was no Groupon or Expedia back then and nobody could read or write so they weren't able to book ahead. When they got there all of the guest rooms were full so they ended up in with the animals. In actual fact back then the animals tended to sleep in with the people anyway, the humans upstairs where the heat went so it was probably quite toasty. God probably thought of this when he decided on Winter cause he knows. So Mary gave birth to a white blue eyed baby but God was right again, everyone actually was really cool about it. In fact some shepherds who didn't work during winter but were picking up a bit of overtime dropped by with gifts for the new born messiah. Gold (quite a nice gift), frankincense (an ointment used in perfume and skincare so not practical but still nice) and myrrh (an antiseptic. Hope he kept the receipt!)
And there we have it, Jesus was born. Mary and Joseph knew that he was actually a God on account of an angel telling Mary and the whole magic virgin pregnancy, but these were tough times so they decided he should have a trade in case the God thing didn't work out. He trained as a carpenter which went well for a few years until he went full God, shared all his wisdom with some illiterate goat herders then died on the cross for our sins. And we haven't heard from God since. Luckily nothing bad has happened since then and we're all sorted so he's probably taking some time off or focussing on Jupiter for a bit.
And that's the nativity. Merry Christmas.
