This year, as I prepare for Christmas, the theme of hospitality looms large. I have been remembering the generous hospitality I have received over my lifetime. I recall one year in St. John’s, NL, when my husband Jim and I did not come home to Nova Scotia to be with extended family for Christmas. A family from our parish invited us to join them for Christmas dinner. It was warm and welcoming, and we felt at home even though this was the first time we had been inside their house.

As we were unpacking Christmas ornaments and decorations this week, I found the beloved Fisher Price Nativity that we bought when our daughter was an infant. There is a stable with figures of Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus, and an angel that fits on the top. If you push gently on the angel’s head, you’ll hear the tune for “Away in a Manger.” It also includes a variety of animals including cows, sheep and a donkey, and three Magi with a camel who come out around Epiphany.

This year as I placed the figures in and around the stable, I was reminded of an Advent retreat I listened in on some years ago, led by Irish theologian Padraig O’Tuama. He challenged the notion that Mary and Joseph were alone the night that Jesus was born, noting that the word “stable” doesn’t appear in the account of Jesus’ birth found in the Gospel of Luke. He says the word we’ve understood as “inn” is better translated from the Greek as “upper room,” and refers to what we would understand as a guest room, or an extra room sometimes let out to travellers. Padraig suggests that it was the upper room that was occupied that night, not the “inn,” and so, in keeping with Jewish custom, the expectant couple were led to the main level of the house, where the family and the animals slept, and where the animals’ feeding trough or manger was kept.

There, Padraig assures us based on his knowledge and understanding, Mary and Joseph would have been welcomed by this extended family. There would have been womenfolk, he says. There would have been midwives to tend to a birthing mother and child. In other words, he claims, the Holy Family was not alone that first night, but instead received the hospitality that any of us might hope for if we were to arrive in the community of our ancestors with a wife ready to give birth. And not only that, but it’s highly unlikely that the Holy Family would have journeyed to Bethlehem alone either. It was more common in first century Palestine to travel as part of a caravan, in the company of others.

When I heard Padraig’s re-interpretation of these aspects of the Christmas story, my heart was warmed. So, too, when I see notices of parishes offering a community Christmas dinner or other opportunities to gather in community, my heart is warmed. We are living in such a fragmented society. Technology allows us to connect with family and friends on the other side of the country or the world in an instant, and this is such a gift. Yet, we long for human contact. We long to meet with one another, to share a meal with one another, to worship with one another.

I hope this Christmas you will have an opportunity to gather with others, to welcome them into your home, or to join them in theirs, or to meet together in community spaces. For those who find themselves alone this Christmas, I hope you will experience the care and hospitality of a loving community of faith. I hope that again this year, the wonder and beauty of Christmas will meet you wherever you are. May the Christ child, who was welcomed into the world in a community of love and care, also welcome you in love and care. May the One who we also know as Emmanuel, God-with-us, be with you this Christmas. And may Christ’s presence, made known to the shepherds of the fields, and Magi from the East, be known in you, so that with them you may rejoice and be glad.

Blessings for a holy Christmas.

Sandra