A few thoughts about "The Christmas Story" that threaten to shatter your cherished "manger scene" image, so stop here if that image is sacrosanct to you!
Okay, I warned you. Here we go:
It is quite possible, maybe even probable that Joseph and Mary were not hunting around for a "hotel" (i.e., "inn") with vacancies. Rather, the text can be taken to mean that when it was time to have the baby, they had to go out to the "stable" (more like a "mud room", probably) because there was nowhere in the house--not "there wasn't a room in the inn", but "there wasn't room in the house"--appropriate for such a process...because the house where they were staying (with Joseph's relatives--after all, they went there because it was his family's hometown!) was perhaps crowded, perhaps small and, in any case, you could hardly just lie down and produce a baby right there in front of all the relatives.
This also rather lets poor Joseph off the hook, as the traditional picture we conjure up is of Joseph hauling his poor wife, already in labor (!), around town on a donkey, inquiring at inns for vacancies--dear Joseph, that was certainly bad timing on your part! The reality is far more likely that they got to Bethlehem in plenty of time and there was no last-minute "donkey ride in labor" around town.
Then there's the beautiful but entirely fallacious notion that three wise men followed a star from the distant east to Bethlehem, showing up on the night Jesus was born.
Wrong on every count.
The Magi (we don't know how many there were) saw the star "in the east", i.e., they were in the east when they saw it--the star appeared to them, therefore, to be in the west, not "a star in the east"--at the time Jesus was born. The Magi, likely Persian astrologers, were thus very far away, nowhere in the neighborhood, and entirely incapable of posing for a "manger scene" the night Jesus was born. And no star led them to "the manger" that night! Way out there in Persia they saw a star that night... or that week... or that month--the Scripture doesn't actually tell us when precisely, except to make it clear it generally coincided with Jesus' birth.
And then... this "star" (which is a word describing its appearance, not necessarily defining what it was, and it almost certainly wasn't a "star" in the usual sense) disappeared.
Now, the Magi needed no star in the sky to lead them to Palestine any more than you need a star in the sky to lead you to Trenton, New Jersey or Warsaw, Poland. They knew perfectly well where Palestine was and, moreover, it was no star in the sky that told them the King of the Jews had been born. The star signalled an event of tremendous significance, but it was upon their own further research (probably taking many months or even close to two years) that they concluded the event was the birth of the King of the Jews, the promised Messiah. The "star" was long gone by this time.
About two years after the event, they finally made their way to Palestine, and naturally they headed to the capital to ask where this King of the Jews was--the most commonsense thing to do. All they know is, a king has been born: where better to seek him than in the capital? They have no other means for locating him--remember, they haven't been following a star!
After their encounter with Herod, during which he ascertained from them that they had seen this "star" two years previous (hence Herod's ordering the killing of all the boys from two years old down, "according to the time he found out from the Magi"), the Magi, heading to Bethlehem according to the advice of the Jewish Torah experts, suddenly saw the star again--now this was a stark, stunning re-appearance of the sign they had seen two years before, manifestly supernatural and local (stars way, way up there in the sky don't lead you to a single house and then stop above it), which is why the scriptures indicate that they were utterly astounded and flabbergasted. This was when, in fact, they "followed the star," like the carols proclaim and the Christmas cards depict... more or less. And the Magi--probably a huge caravan including dozens of people and many pack animals--followed it indeed directly to the house where the Child lived.
Personally, I suspect that this "star" was the very presence of God, the Shekinah glory that appeared in the Temple.
So it's a wildly, radically different set of circumstance from the sentimental, traditional image of all the shepherds and Magi showing up at a stable, which made up for the lack of a hotel room, the night Jesus was born.
Also, the casual but definite mention of "the house" (suggesting we have already been talking about it, i.e., in the account of His birth) where the Child lived suggests this is, in fact, the very same house (the "Joseph" family homestead) where Jesus was born two years earlier. Which further argues against the "stable out behind the inn" tradition.
And the fact that Joseph and family were still there two years later (why hadn't they gone home, after all, to Nazareth, once the census was complete?) suggests to me that, upon reflection, they had decided it would be better to settle down for good in Bethlehem, rather than go back to Nazareth where there were a lot of nosy neighbors, and rumors, and gossip.... On the whole, the family enjoyed a far more "stellar" (pun intended) reputation in Bethlehem, what with stories of angelic choirs heralding the birth of "the Lord's Christ" (Yahweh's Anointed One). It would be typical of "local religion" for the villagers to consider Jesus their good luck charm.
The Slaughter of the Innocents would have brought all such notions to an end. Even with Herod dead and gone, Bethlehem would no longer be a friendly environment, to say the least. "It's your fault Herod killed our sons!" So there was no going back to Bethlehem after their "retreat" in Egypt. In fact, the Scriptures never mention that Jesus stepped foot in Bethlehem again ever.
At the risk of self-contradiction, I wouldn't hesitate, all the same, to put a "manger scene" under my Christmas tree with all the traditional cast of characters--the shepherds, the Magi, the angels, the star, the cows and sheep, and of course the Holy Family. It may not be historically accurate, but you only get one Christmas a year! So I'd look on my manger scene as an "historical synopsis". There was, after all, a stable (or "pen" or "back room" of some kind--as I understand it, it was essentially just a part of the house where one might expect animals to be bedded down, perhaps something like what we'd call "the mud room") and a manger, and shepherds that night... and the Magi did show up two years later, so I'd call my manger scene a "time-telescoped synopsis"... or just plain "poetic license"!
We tend to imagine the entire Christmas Story as a single supernatural fabric sustained with glorious background music...and "real life" can seem a very dull, disappointing thing by comparison--and so we do a disservice to both "the Christmas Story" and "real life".
The events of Jesus' birth, to outward appearances, were primarily commonplace, even harried and humiliating...and without the benefit of a Hollywood orchestra...except for the jarring punctuation of the shepherds' arrival with news nobody was expecting about angels out there in the fields--angels nobody but the shepherds actually got to see! That can hardly have been persuasive to many, except for Mary and Joseph. They had a reason already, in their hearts, to grasp the shepherds' news as an astounding, external confirmation of what up to then had been known only to the most intimate circle (Joseph, Mary, Elizabeth, Zachariah...others?) and truly inexplicable an un-demonstrable to anyone else--a glorious secret that was painfully secret! They themselves didn't see the angels, or in fact the "star" the Persian magi saw from the distant east, and they never imagined a caravan of these Persians would be showing up two years later.
Basically, it was "life as normal" punctuated with the rarest, vivid flashes of the "beyond", but sustained by a profound inner awareness of the greater dimension running through everything. It doesn't sound so different from our lives, does it. Of course, it was different in that this was Christ the Lord born into the family...but born precisely in order to live that mundane, muddy, harried, soundtrack-less life real people live in the real world. That's what it means that "the Word became flesh"--not just that the Uncreated became the Created, but that He entered the tedium, boredom, the unremarkable, the dirty, monotonous, anonymous, lonely, stifling, dragging haul of it all. And glory was in it, because of the "khesed"-heart-bond with the Father. As the saying goes, ay, there's the rub. There's the mystery--and we're supposed to enter it. That's why it happened: "And I and the Father will come to him, and make our home in him."
Some have suggested that Joseph and his family were far from poor, contrary to the commonly unquestioned assumption. As, possibly, a stone mason, not a carpenter--a view that seems to be gaining in credence--Joseph certainly could have had what we'd call a going concern, a thriving business. It has been suggested that when Paul talks about Jesus making himself nothing, there is less a metaphysical/theological point being made, i.e., about the Incarnation, than a simple statement that Jesus, having every opportunity to live a comfortable, successful life in the world on worldly terms, gave it all up and, quite literally, became one of the poor. I can't say, of course, whether that is true or not, but I feel sure of this much: if it is the case, it certainly doesn't (how could it?) detract in any way or diminish the divine grace disclosed in the "Christ-Event", the whole essence of Jesus' appearing and redemptive feat. Whatever "the real case" is (which we'll know only at His coming) it will turn out to be the peak and unsurpassable summit of grace and divine self-giving.
