All The Animals of Bethlehem

What’s not to like about the Christmas story? A long journey, a quaint village, a pregnant mom and a worried dad, a grumpy innkeeper on a dark and stormy night, a murderous king, a young couple in crisis, homely rustics and singing angels, mystical wizards following a magical star, a newborn baby …and animals.

…A dozy donkey and a humble ox, elegant camels in royal livery, cuddly lambs and dumb sheep. The story has everything needed to sweeten the mind and warm the heart.

Readers of my two books on the characters of Christmas will realize that I have tried to cut through the tinsel, trimmings and traditions to discover what the nativity of the Lord was really like.

This effort is not to be a scrooge, a grump or a grinch, but to ground our Christmas celebrations in the grittiness of the incarnation in order to remind ourselves that this was no sentimental fairy tale, no cute fable or fantasy with a lovely lesson. It was not a fabrication by the early Christians to make Jesus more special. Instead it was a particular child born to a particular mother in a particular stable in a particular Judean village on a particular date and time in human history.

Yes, the stable was real and the animals were real, but what were they really and how did they find their way into the Christmas story? First we must realize that the story…