The Christmas Story: A UU version

A long long time ago, there lived a woman named Mary.  She was very young... hardly more than a girl.  Mary had a baby growing inside of her—which was a problem in some ways.  You have to have a special kind of cuddle to get a baby inside you, and Mary was supposed to wait to do that until she was married.  Now maybe she didn’t wait, or maybe the baby got in there some other way, but either way Mary was in Trouble.  She was scared because everybody would be angry with her, and because she had to push that baby out.  Which really hurts.  And then, once it was out, she was going to have to take care of it, which isn’t very easy either.

To make matters worse, someone was after Mary’s baby.  Someone wanted to kill it, so she was really scared.  Also, it was tax time, which makes everyone grumpy.

Mary and her husband Joseph had travelled very far, on a donkey, which is uncomfortable even when you aren’t pregnant, and Mary was already exhausted when she started to feel a great pain in her tummy.  The baby was coming.

At home, there would have been people to help her.  People who knew her and loved her and who had pushed out babies themselves.  People who would be On Top Of The Situation.

But there was nobody like that in this strange place.  The only person to help her was her husband Joseph, who was going to all the hotels saying “a baby is about to shoot out of my wife, can we do all that bleeding and screaming in one of your rooms, please?”.  Unsurprisingly, all the hotels said they were full.  So Mary had to have the baby in a barn, with nobody to help her but Joseph.  Who was very nice, but not exactly great in an emergency.

Having a baby is hard, even in a hospital room, but it is extra hard if you are in a barn that is smelly and dark and filled with animals and pokey straw and poop.  But Mary was doing her best, all crying and scared, and Joseph was doing his best, all crying and scared, and then all of a sudden, Mary had a Realization.

She realized that all of this was a bad idea.  She realized it wasn’t going to work, and decided that the baby was going to have to turn right around and grow up in her tummy forever because she was not strong enough to push it out.

Except, it turned out that Mary was strong enough.  When her brain didn't know what came next, her body showed her what to do.  And there was noise, and there was mess, and there was wailing from everyone present, and after that there was a beautiful little baby, like you see in the pictures.  

Well, not exactly like you see in the pictures.  

Because newborn babies actually look kinda like cross eyed hairless rats covered in blood and slime and with gaping drooley industrial vacuum suckers for mouths.  But when their parents look at them, they see the most beautiful thing in the world, and the pictures you see are the pictures of the baby as seen through Mary’s heart.

Not as the baby actually looked.  The way the baby actually looked--and smelled--is what later prompted the wise guys to hand over a bunch of jewelry and perfume.  Because they were not exactly wise but they were definitely more objective about appearances.

So Mary sat there, looking down at her baby, and she was filled with the most amazing love for her little boy.  In that moment, she was no longer a scared young woman huddled in a sea of night with a powerful man trying to hunt her and her family.  She was a mother, with mama bear love and mama bear power.  And Joseph was no longer a bad-in-emergencies maybe-father.  He was full one hundred percent father, because parents aren’t created by baby making, they are created by baby loving.

And Mary was no longer far from home, because the love and hope that filled her heart made a family home out of wherever she was.  The straw felt softer, and the animals were quiet and calm, and she and Joseph cuddled the baby and they realized that love makes a family wherever you are.

We say it all the time... "love makes a family", and we make it sound simple. Except it isn't.  Love making a family is often very hard.  It involves crying and darkness and sometimes yelling and mess.  It involves things not being right, not at all.  It doesn't usually fit the first time, and it's often way harder than we pictured.  It involves knowing we are not strong enough, but pushing through anyway.  It’s not about un-messying things so that they can be wonderful.  It’s about knowing that things can be messy and wonderful at the same time.

We tell that story at this time of year, when the days are short and it’s easy to be filled with gloom as we wait for the sun to return.   We tell it now, because this is a good time to remind ourselves that each of us carries light inside of us.  And that nothing that is going on around you can keep you from letting that light shine.  Even when it's hard, and messy, and sometimes very loud, we keep going.

And it’s nothing like you see in the pictures--but it’s wonderful anyway.

By Liz James

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