THE STRANGER IN THE MANGER: A Christmas Deep Dive into Christ
The Weird, Wild, and Wonderful Things You Never Learned in Sunday School About the Most Famous Person in History
Every December, the nativity scene gets unpacked from the same cardboard box in the same corner of the same attic, and the same plastic figures take their positions in the same arrangement they have occupied for generations. Mary kneels serenely. Joseph stands watch with his shepherdâs crook. The wise men arrive bearing gifts that would make any baby shower awkward. And there in the center lies the infant Jesus, perpetually calm, perpetually clean, perpetually glowing with that factory applied halo that suggests divinity comes standard with purchase.
But the real story of that baby, the one that got edited out of the felt board presentations and the childrenâs pageants and the greeting cards with their soft focus photography, is far stranger and more fascinating than the sanitized version we have inherited. The actual historical and scriptural record, when you dig into it with the curiosity of a reporter rather than the reverence of a congregant, reveals a narrative so strange it wouldâŠ
