The Birth of Christ

Registration in Bethlehem

Mary was already engaged to Joseph, the carpenter of Nazareth, and soon after the angel had appeared to her they were married.  Joseph’s parents did not come from Nazareth but from Bethlehem, a town about 70 miles to the south, where King David had once lived.  So it was that when the Government wanted to make a list of everybody (a kind of National Registration) and said that everyone must go to his home town to give in his name, Joseph had to go to Bethlehem.  Mary also decided to go with Joseph.

Jesus is born

I think perhaps they reached Bethlehem in the late afternoon and no doubt Mary and Joseph were glad to see the twinkling lights as the lamps in the houses were lit, for they must have been on the road now for four or five days.  They went first to the inn which was very busy.  “No, no more room: absolutely full up, can’t take any more”.  It was the same all over the town.  People had been coming in all day and there was not a bed to be had anywhere.  But just a moment, there was one place which was warm and dry, not very clean perhaps but better than nothing at all.  There was a little cave which was used as a stable for cattle.  There would be some straw which was softer to lie on than the bare ground.  So Mary and Joseph turned in there.  And during the night her little Son was born.  She wrapped him carefully in bands of cloth and settled him down in the cosiest place she could find, the manger or trough from which the cattle ate their hay.  There she watched him in the light of a lantern.