During World War I, in the winter of 1914, on the battlefields of Flanders, one of the most unusual events in all of human history took place. The Germans had been in a fierce battle with the British and French. Both sides were dug in, safe in muddy, man-made trenches six to eight feet deep that seemed to stretch forever.

All of a sudden, German troops began to put small Christmas trees, lit with candles, outside of their trenches. Then, they began to sing songs. Across the way, in the "no man's land" between them, came songs from the British and French troops. Incredibly, many of the Germans, who had worked in England before the war, were able to speak good enough English to propose a "Christmas" truce.

The British and French troops, all along the miles of trenches, accepted. In a few places, allied troops fired at the Germans as they climbed out of their trenches. But the Germans were persistent and Christmas would be celebrated even under the threat of impending death.

According to Stanley Weintraub, who wrote about this event in his book, Silent Night, "signboards arose up and down the trenches in a variety of shapes. They were usually in English, or - from the Germans - in fractured English. Rightly, the Germans assumed that the other side could not read traditional gothic lettering, and that few English understood spoken German. 'YOU NO FIGHT, WE NO FIGHT' was the most frequently employed German message. Some British units improvised 'MERRY CHRISTMAS' banners and waited for a response. More placards on both sides popped up."

A spontaneous truce resulted. Soldiers left their trenches, meeting in the middle to shake hands. The first order of business was to bury the dead who had been previously unreachable because of the conflict. Then, they exchanged gifts. Chocolate cake, cognac, postcards, newspapers, tobacco. In a few places, along the trenches, soldiers exchanged rifles for soccer balls and began to play games.

It didn't last forever. In fact, some of the generals didn't like it at all and commanded their troops to resume shooting at each other. After all, they were in a war. Soldiers eventually did resume shooting at each other. But only after, in a number of cases, a few days of wasting rounds of ammunition shooting at stars in the sky instead of soldiers in the opposing army across the field.

For a few precious moments there was peace on earth good will toward men. All because the focus was on Christmas. Happens every time. There's something about Christmas that changes people. It happened over 2000 years ago in a little town called Bethlehem. It's been happening over and over again down through the years of time.

This week, Lord willing, it will happen again.

Origins:   Of the British and German soldiers who faced each other across the muddy fields of Flanders on Christmas Eve in 1914, even those who no ?
longer believed the optimistic predictions of a short war would have been shocked to learn that it would drag on for another four years — and that it would ultimately see the staggering totals of 8½ million dead and 21 million wounded. Nonetheless, by December 1914 the European War — being fought by men who were weary, frustrated, and dispirited, bogged down in the glue-like muck, waterlogged trenches, and barbed-wire entanglements of Belgium, with little sense of national purpose other than to defeat the enemy — had already claimed hundreds of thousands of casualties since the beginning of hostilities in early August.

Despite the constant machine gun fire and artillery bombardments of the western front, and even though in some places front-line troops were a mere 60 yards away from the enemy's lines, soldiers on both sides received gift boxes containing food and tobacco prepared by their governments that Christmas. The Germans, who had a direct land link to their home country (British soldiers in Belgium were separated from London by sixty miles and the English Channel), also managed to send small Christmas trees and candles to troops at the front. And, notwithstanding the fact that a Christmas cease-fire proposed by Pope Benedict XV had already been rejected by both sides as "impossible," on Christmas Eve the "law of unanticipated consequences went to work," as Stanley Weintraub, author of Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce, described it:

". . . the Germans set trees on trench parapets and lit the candles. Then, they began singing carols, and though their language was unfamiliar to their enemies, the tunes were not. After a few trees were shot at, the British became more curious than belligerent and crawled forward to watch and listen. And after a while, they began to sing. By Christmas morning, the "no man's land" between the trenches was filled with fraternizing soldiers, sharing rations and gifts, singing and (more solemnly) burying their dead between the lines. Soon they were even playing soccer, mostly with improvised balls. According to the official war diary of the 133rd Saxon Regiment, "Tommy and Fritz" kicked about a real football supplied by a Scot. "This developed into a regulation football match with caps casually laid out as goals. The frozen ground was no great matter . . . The game ended 3-2 for Fritz."

The spontaneous truce (which included French and Belgian troops in some sectors) was largely over by New Year's Day, however. Commanders on both sides ordered their troops to restart hostilities under penalty of court martial, and German and British soldiers reluctantly parted, in the words of Pvt. Percy Jones of the Westminster Brigade, "with much hand-shaking and mutual goodwill." The Great War stretched on through another three Christmases and beyond, but all subsequent attempts to organize similiar truces failed, and millions more died before the armistice of 11 November 1918 finally ended the shooting for good.

As Stanley Weintraub noted at the close of his book on the 1914 Christmas truce:

"However much the momentary peace of 1914 evidenced the desire of the combatants to live in amity with one another, it was doomed from the start by the realities beyond the trenches. As the English rock band The Farm, decades later, summed up the results after the enemies "joined together and decided not to fight," but failed, there was "nothing learned and nothing gained.""

A celebration of the human spirit, the Christmas Truce remains a moving manifestation of the absurdities of war. A very minor Scottish poet of Great War vintage, Frederick Niven, may have got it right in his "A Carol from Flanders," which closed,

O ye who read this truthful rime
    From Flanders, kneel and say:
God speed the time when every day
    Shall be as Christmas Day.

Although the Christmas Truce of 1914 may seem like a distant myth to those now at arms in parts of the world where vast cultural differences between combatants make such an occurrence impossible, it remains a symbol of hope to those who believe that a recognition of our common humanity may someday reverse the maxim that "Peace is harder to make than war."

One of the most sung Christmas Carols is Silent Night. I grew up speaking German and learning this song in German. The song was originally written in German - so to me it still sounds better sung in its original language. Enjoy this story of the origins of this well-loved carol.

Ron

SILENT NIGHT: The Song Heard 'Round The World
by Bill Egan, Christmas Historian

180 years ago the carol "Stille Nacht! Heilige Nacht" was heard for the first time in a village church in Oberndorf, Austria. The congregation at that Midnight Mass in St. Nicholas Church listened as the voices of the assistant pastor, Fr. Joseph Mohr, and the choir director, Franz Xaver Gruber, rang through the church to the accompaniment of Fr. Mohr's guitar. On each of the six verses, the choir repeated the last two lines in four-part harmony.

On that Christmas Eve, a song was born that would wing its way into the hearts of people throughout the world. Now translated into hundreds of languages, it is sung by untold millions every December from small chapels in the Andes to great cathedrals in Antwerp and Rome.

Today books, films and Internet sites are filled with fanciful tales purporting to tell the history of "Silent Night." Some tell of mice eating the bellows of the organ creating the necessity for a hymn to be accompanied by a guitar. Others claim that Joseph Mohr was forced to write the words to a new carol in haste since the organ would not play. A recent film, created for Austrian television places Oberndorf in the Alps and includes evil railroad barons and a double-dealing priest, while a recent book by a German author places a zither in the hands of Franz Gruber and connects Joseph Mohr with a tragic fire engulfing the city of Salzburg. You can read claims that "Silent Night" was sung on Christmas Eve in 1818 and then forgotten by its creators. Of course, the latter are easily discounted by manuscript arrangements of the carol by both Mohr and Gruber which were produced at various times between 1820 and 1855.

In this age of tabloid journalism, it's not surprising that some feel it necessary to invent frivolous anecdotes and create fables for a story that is quite beautiful in its simplicity.

The German words for the original six stanzas of the carol we know as "Silent Night" were written by Joseph Mohr in 1816, when he was a young priest assigned to a pilgrimage church in Mariapfarr, Austria. His grandfather lived nearby, and it is easy to imagine that he could have come up with the words while walking thorough the countryside on a visit to his elderly relative. The fact is, we have no idea if any particular event inspired Joseph Mohr to pen his poetic version of the birth of the Christchild. The world is fortunate, however, that he didn't leave it behind when he was transferred to Oberndorf the following year (1817).

On December 24, 1818 Joseph Mohr journeyed to the home of musician-schoolteacher Franz Gruber who lived in an apartment over the schoolhouse in nearby Arnsdorf. He showed his friend the poem and asked him to add a melody and guitar accompaniment so that it could be sung at Midnight Mass. His reason for wanting the new carol is unknown. Some speculate that the organ would not work; others feel that the assistant pastor, who dearly loved guitar music, merely wanted a new carol for Christmas.

Later that evening, as the two men, backed by the choir, stood in front of the main altar in St. Nicholas Church and sang "Stille Nacht! Heilige Nacht!" for the first time, they could hardly imagine the impact their composition would have on the world.

Karl Mauracher, a master organ builder and repairman from the Ziller Valley, traveled to Oberndorf to work on the organ, several times in subsequent years. While doing his work in St. Nicholas, he obtained a copy of the composition and took it home with him. Thus, the simple carol, began its journey around the world as a "Tyrolean Folk Song."

Two traveling families of folk singers from the Ziller Valley, similar to the Trapp Family Singers of "The Sound of Music" fame, incorporated the song into their repertoire. According to the Leipziger Tageblatt, the Strassers sang the song in a concert in Leipzig in December 1832. It was during this period, several musical notes were changed, and the carol evolved into the melody we know today. On another occasion, according to an historical plaque, the Rainer Family sang the Christmas carol before an audience which included Emperor Franz I and Tsar Alexander I. In the year 1839, the Rainers performed "Stille Nacht" for the first time in America, at the Alexander Hamilton Monument outside Trinity Church in New York City.

Joseph Bletzacher, the Court Opera singer from Hannover, reported that by the 1840s, the carol was already well known in Lower Saxony. "In Berlin," he says, "the Royal Cathedral Choir popularized it especially. It became in fact the favorite Christmas carol of the artistically appreciative King Frederick William IV of Prussia, who used to have the Cathedral Choir sing it for him during the Christmas season each year."

By the time the song had become famous throughout Europe, the Joseph Mohr had died and the composer was unknown. Although Franz Gruber wrote to music authorities in Berlin stating that he was the composer, the melody had been assumed to be the work of Haydn, Mozart or Beethoven at various times and these thoughts persisted even into the twentieth century. The controversy was put to rest four years ago when a long-lost arrangement of "Stille Nacht" in the hand of Joseph Mohr was authenticated. In the upper right hand corner of the arrangement, Mohr wrote, "Melodie von Fr. Xav. Gruber."

During his lifetime, Franz Xaver Gruber produced a number of orchestral arrangements of his composition. The original guitar arrangement is missing, but five other Gruber manuscripts of the carol exist. The manuscript by Joseph Mohr (ca. 1820) is for guitar accompaniment and is probably the closest to the arrangement and melody sung at Midnight Mass in 1818.

Later in his life, the Gruber family moved to Hallein, now the site of the Franz Xaver Gruber Museum. It contains several furnished rooms in his former home along with outstanding exhibits dealing with the history of "Silent Night," including Joseph Mohr's guitar. Gruber's grave is outside the home and is decorated with a Christmas tree in December.

Fr. Joseph Mohr's final resting place is a tiny Alpine ski resort, Wagrain. He was born into poverty in Salzburg in 1792 and died penniless in Wagrain in 1848, where he had been assigned as pastor of the church. He had donated all his earnings to be used for eldercare and the education of the children in the area. His memorial from the townspeople is the Joseph Mohr School located a dozen yards from his grave. The overseer of St. Johann's, in a report to the bishop, described Mohr as "a reliable friend of mankind, toward the poor, a gentle, helping father."

In 1998 it was discovered that Joseph Mohr was not born in the building once thought to be his birthplace at 9 Steingasse in Salzburg. Research into the census records indicates that Mohr and his mother resided at 31 Steingasse. At the same time the Governor of Salzburg, Franz Schausberger, announced a new initiative to promote the cultural sites related to the carol and its composers. It seems that Austria has finally realized that their national treasure has a very special significance outside its birth nation and has become "The Song Heard 'Round The World."

Perhaps this is part of the miracle of "Silent Night." The words flowed from the imagination of a modest curate. The music was composed by a musician who was not known outside his village. There was no celebrity to sing at its world premiere. Yet its powerful message of heavenly peace has crossed all borders and language barriers, conquering the hearts of people everywhere.

(Christmas historian Bill Egan, a retired Navy photojournalist and resident of Flagler Beach, Florida, is a staff writer for Year 'Round Christmas Magazine and provides Christmas research for Charles Osgood of "The Osgood File" on the CBS Radio Network. He is the producer of the annual "Adventsingen" concert in Daytona Beach and lectures on Christmas topics throughout the Eastern U.S. Bill has visited the various "Stille Nacht" locations to research the history of the world famous carol for the Austrian National Tourist Office (ANTO) and Austrian Information. Gabriele Wolf of ANTO Media Relations says that Bill Egan is the foremost "Silent Night" scholar in the U.S. and the Daytona Beach News-Journal says that he is one of the world's leading experts on the origins of the carol.)

Secret Santa helps the Valley's needy (sorry a little long but worth the read!)

A tradition that began with act of kindness comes to Phoenix

Judi Villa
The Arizona Republic
Dec. 21, 2006 12:00 AM

Mittie Trammel didn't have enough money to buy groceries, let alone Christmas presents for her grandchildren.

Then a stranger who said she was with "Santa" handed Trammel $200 in a Phoenix thrift store. Trammel, 70, burst into tears.

"This is the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me," she said. "I sure needed it."

Trammel shook as she remembered waking up on Christmas morning as a kid and rushing to see what Santa had brought.

"I never stopped (believing)," she said. "I always knew there had to be something. There's a Santa Claus, and there's a God. . . . I'm just so grateful."

For four hours Wednesday, a mystery Santa and his elves cruised through Phoenix, anonymously doling out crisp $100 bills to those who needed a lift. Santa wanted to be known only as a 61-year-old businessman from Kansas City, Mo., but his "sleigh ride" is part of a tradition started by another Secret Santa 27 years ago.

"It's spontaneous and it's unexpected," Santa said.

"All we're doing is making (their life) better for one day."

All Santa asked in return is that recipients do something nice for someone else during the holidays.

At the Greyhound bus depot Wednesday, Santa zeroed in on Trace Bostick and his three children as they waited for the bus that would take them home to North Carolina.

Bostick was laid off around the time he sent his little ones to spend a couple of weeks with their grandma in Phoenix. Three months passed before he could get another job and scrounge up the money to come back for them.

"I've been fighting just as hard as I can to get them back home," Bostick said. "It took almost everything I had just to get out here to get them and get them back."

When the man who called himself Santa began peeling off $100 bills, Bostick's eyes filled with tears. He almost couldn't speak.

"What's wrong, Daddy?" asked Bostick's oldest son, Gabriel, 5.

"Thank you, Jesus," Bostick said. "It's 'cause I'm happy. . . . This couldn't have come at a better time."

Santa disappeared as quickly as he came, leaving Bostick and others wondering: Who was that man?

Needing a helping hand

The story actually starts in 1971, when Larry Stewart found himself homeless, penniless and hungry in Mississippi. Turned away at a local church, Stewart went to a diner and ordered a breakfast he couldn't pay for. He waited for the crowd to thin, then put on what he thought was an Academy Award-winning performance about losing his wallet.

The owner, who also was the cook, came over, reached under his stool and appeared to pick something up.

"Son," he said, "you must have dropped this."

It was a $20 bill.

"I knew I hadn't dropped it, but I thought, 'Thank you, Lord,' " Stewart said. "(That $20) absolutely changed my life in a heartbeat," he said.

Stewart paid the bill, pushed his car into a gas station, filled the tank and headed west with feelings of guilt and gratitude.

"It was an answer to my prayers," Stewart said. "I made a promise to God right then and there that if I was ever in a position to help someone else, I would do that."

Paying it forward

Stewart got his first chance in 1979, when he gave $20 to a carhop and told her to keep the change. Laid off just weeks before Christmas and with only $600 in the bank, Stewart withdrew $200 in $5 and $10 bills and handed it out to people who looked like they needed it.

A month later, Stewart's company gave him his job back. And by the end of 1982, he'd made his first million. He began handing out $100 bills.

For more than two decades, Stewart has given money anonymously at Christmastime on the streets of Kansas City and places like New York City, San Diego, Virginia and Florida, where people's lives have been touched by tragedies from shootings to wildfires to terrorist attacks. Last year, after Hurricane Katrina, he went to Mississippi.

"He just finds the areas and goes in and spreads Christmas cheer," said Larry McCormick, a retired FBI agent and one of Santa's elves.

Over the years, Stewart has given out more than $1 million of his own money. He never took a tax break.

And he remained anonymous until this year, when a tabloid threatened to reveal his identity, and Stewart came forward first.

"I never wanted it to be about me," said Stewart, 58, who was diagnosed in April with esophageal cancer. "It's just about the act itself and how blessed it is to give and receive."

Spreading the wealth

Stewart is training four other Santas across the country to carry on the giving, and he hopes his story inspires others to commit their own random acts of kindness, even small things that don't involve money.

"I don't plan on this ending at all," Stewart said.

This year, Stewart and his four trainee Santas are giving away $175,000 of their own money in four U.S. cities, including Phoenix.

Although Stewart's identity may be known, his helpers, like the Santa who came to Phoenix, still want to remain anonymous.

"If a bunch of strangers can do this in Phoenix, anybody can, whether it's $1 or a kind word," Santa said.

About $10,000 was given away in Phoenix. Santa said he wanted to provide "a little uplifting" after the "Baseline Killer" terrorized residents with a 13-month spree of murders, rapes and robberies.

"It's just a way of giving back," said Steve Chenoweth, a retired FBI agent and one of Santa's elves.

"It just absolutely changes people's lives," Chenoweth said. "There's no caveats. There's no attachments, no nothing. We just hand it out and say, 'Merry Christmas.' "

Gary Lauterbach, 56, was down to his last $40 when Santa walked up to him outside a laundry.

Lauterbach was laid off last month and just got notice that his electricity was going to be shut off. Santa handed him $200.Does he believe in Santa?

"I do now," Lauterbach said.

"Thank you! Thank you!"

Several people stared in disbelief at the money. Lunaly Bustillos, 14, tried to give it back.

"I didn't know him, and I thought it was fake," she said. "He's really generous."

Along his journey, Santa hopped onto a bus and handed out $100 bills to 12 people onboard.

He gave to mothers picking up their children from school and to soldiers at the bus depot.

At a Wal-Mart, he sent three Phoenix police officers inside to pay for the groceries of families in the checkout line.

"I think I might faint," said a woman working at a thrift store.

A week ago, Traci Zamarron, 37, packed her three children into a van and headed to Phoenix from Iowa to escape an abusive relationship. Zamarron looked for help in the Valley but couldn't find much.

She moved into a one-bedroom apartment with her children and her mother. On Tuesday, the van was towed with all their stuff inside. The cost just to retrieve the belongings: $75. It would be $150 if they wanted the van back, too.

Zamarron's mother, Nancy Wells, wanted to cry when Santa gave the family $300.

"There is a God in Phoenix," Wells said. "We're trying to continue up a little at a time. This is going to help us do something."

"Oh, my goodness. I can't believe this is true," Zamarron said. "We were down to nothing, down to zero. Now we're going to have a merry Christmas."

A witness to what faith can be By Tom Krattenmaker
Mon Dec 18, 8:08 AM ET USA TODAY

PORTLAND, Ore. - Something radical is happening every Friday night where homeless people congregate downtown under the Burnside Bridge.

Car- and vanloads of Christian volunteers swoop in with sleeping bags and coats to protect their dispossessed friends against the raw, wet weather that has moved in. They dispense hot meals and set up stations for shaves and haircuts. While a few pull out guitars and strike up their Jesus-themed songs, a small number of the volunteers commit one of the more audacious acts of compassion and humility I have ever witnessed: They wash the homeless people's feet.

Four folding chairs are set up in a row, each occupied by a downtrodden human being, his or her bare feet immersed in a tub of warm water. In front of each, kneeling on a pad, a volunteer gently scrubs away. Drying and powdering follow before the recipients are sent on their way, their feet clean and dry and swathed in a fresh pair of socks.

The spirit of the season? This is it.

"I can't find the words to describe how good that felt," one beneficiary says as he moves off, smiling broadly.

The night I observed this ritual, perhaps 100 homeless women and men were on hand, as well as a similar number of volunteers, deployed by an inter-denominational evangelical organization called Bridgetown Ministries. For more than three years, the group has been performing "Night Strike," in addition to other programs aimed at serving disadvantaged youth and Portland's less fortunate. Their motto, as printed on the T-shirt worn by ministry leader Marshall Snider, captures the ministry's philosophy in five simple words: "Get out of the box."

A biblical act

Washing the feet of society's outcasts might be as far out of the box as you can get. This work has practical importance, of course; people who can't keep their feet clean and dry end up suffering extreme discomfort or worse. But there's more to it than that. What Bridgetown Ministries does on Friday nights is highly biblical.

Jesus, in the Gospel of Matthew, talks about "the least of these," as in, "Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for (God)." Ministry leader Snider had invoked that very passage while preparing the volunteers back at ministry headquarters earlier in the evening. "When you go out there tonight," Snider told them, "I want you to look for Jesus. You might see him in the eyes of a drunk person, a homeless person."

Feet-washing has resonance with a revealing New Testament passage. In Luke, a woman "who had lived a sinful life" washes Jesus' feet with her tears and wipes them with her hair and pours perfume on them, upsetting the self-righteous Pharisee who is hosting Jesus and who finds the woman unworthy of Jesus' company. Jesus praises the woman for her faith and forgives her sins.

Then there are the sheer logistics: Washing someone's feet is an act best performed while kneeling. Given the washer's position, and the unpleasant appearance and odor of a homeless person's feet, it's hard to imagine an act more humbling.

Looking for Jesus in the eyes of a homeless person. Contrast that with a different, and decidedly less inspiring, face of faith more often on display in the media and public square. Leaders of the Christian Right continue to scapegoat gays and lesbians and emphasize other wedge issues, with little to say publicly about the "least of these," unless they happen to be as-yet unborn. A notorious, high-profile few seize disasters such as Hurricane Katrina not to emphasize compassion but to suggest that the victims in some sense had it coming because of their sinful ways. The unfortunate tendency is hardly confined to Christianity. In Iraq, religious differences are fueling rising levels of bloodshed between Shiite and Sunni Muslims. Civilians are being killed by the hundreds - in the name of religion?

These ugly, destructive appearances of religion make it tempting to accept the arguments of atheist writers such as Sam Harris, who asserts that religious faith has become a dangerous force that must be eradicated if the world is to overcome its violent divisions and intractable problems. Harris writes in his recent book Letter to a Christian Nation that only when Christianity, Judaism and Islam are relics of the past "will we stand a chance of healing the deepest and most dangerous fractures in our world."

If Harris were attacking fundamentalism rather than the broad sweep of monotheistic religion, I'd be with him 100%. But it's hard to indict all religion when you see the way faith manifests under the Burnside Bridge. The features of hard-edged Christianity that many find repellant - condemnation, exclusivity, belligerence - are absent at Night Strike. Bridgetown Ministries and its dozens of volunteers aren't vetting the moral worthiness of the homeless people whose hair they cut, bodies they clothe and feet they wash. They know some might be drunk and some on drugs. Are they homeless because they're lazy? Do they deserve this care? The questions are utterly irrelevant from the perspective of the ministry's radical compassion. As Snider puts it, "We're just out there to love on people."

If only we could see this form of faith more often in our highly charged public arena. No doubt, the bad name borne by Christianity in some quarters is partly the fault of the media for highlighting conflict and inflammatory rhetoric and for shying away from the thousands of acts of Christian decency all around us. But most of the blame must be laid at the feet of the loudest and most visible champions of the Christian Right. Are those who project the divisive and arrogant side of religion willing to kneel down and cleanse the feet of the homeless?

What the world could be

Perhaps what happens Friday nights under the Burnside Bridge can be a reminder. While the fighting over religion drags on, let's remember that many, many people around the world - some who count themselves among the true believers, some who don't - are living up to the religious ideal. They're helping the needy, feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, even washing their feet.

My hope for Christmas is that the radical love of people such as Marshall Snider comes to be known as the true and predominant expression of religious faith - and that it infects our whole society, people religious and otherwise. Imagine the changes that might come about if that were to happen. Imagine what the world might then become.

Tom Krattenmaker, who lives in Portland, Ore., specializes in religion in public life and is a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors. He is working on a book about the Christianization of professional sports.

About thirty-three years ago Tom Harpur, at the time the religion editor for the Toronto Star (Toronto, Ontario, Canada) undertook an unusual journey. He retraced the steps of Mary and Joseph from Nazareth to Bethlehem. The biblical account tells the story in very succinct terms:

"In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to his own town to register. So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child." (The Gospel of St. Luke 1:1-5)

Reading this account by Dr. Luke in today's travel experience is a bit like saying, "Ron and his wife, June, drove up to Tucson (Arizona) this afternoon from Phoenix."

Except we need to remember several things:

1. Joseph and Mary were not driving a vehicle capable of driving the distance between Nazareth and Bethlehem in comfort. They were, at best, riding a donkey. We are driving a comfortable vehicle.

2. Joseph and Mary would have taken over a week to walk from Nazareth to Bethlehem. When Tom Harpur retraced the steps of the holy couple, it took him about 10 days. June and I make the trip to Tucson in about one and a half hours.

3. The path from Nazareth is rocky, uneven and filled with treacherous weeds and animals. The road to Tucson is paved.

4. There were no creature comforts on the path. There were no Holiday Inns, no comfortable rest stops, no restaurants. Mary and Joseph would either have taken food along or would have tried to find food from locals along the way. We will get to Tucson before we need to worry about a meal.

5. There were dangerous people along the path who would have been lying in wait for travelers who were making the pilgrimage to Bethlehem to fulfill the requirement of Governor Quirinius order to be counted in the rolls. We travel with relative security of knowing that the road is well-policed by the AZ Department of Public Safety.

6. The path is not only uneven, it is not level. Nazareth lies in a basin. The first challenge Joseph and Mary faced was to get out of the basin - a climb of about 500 feet. As they proceeded south, on the third or fourth day of their journey, the couple would have encountered the Ascent of Lebanon, a climb of several hundred feet. Since the trail would have taken a number of ups and downs it is likely that the elevation changes would have been equivalent to over 1,000 feet. Tucson is about 1,000 feet higher in elevation than Phoenix - and we are driving on a paved road!

7. On top of all of these challenges, Mary is pregnant! She is pregnant with God's gift for the world! If the robbers and bandits along the way knew the true nature of her inner package, what harm might have come to her? As we know her babe was in more danger from kings and governors than from robbers and bandits. Maybe that is still true!

It is tempting to paint the original Christmas story in terms of our modern experience. All the sanitizing by our culture will not cover up the challenges this young couple faced in their journey to the manger!

The first Christmas was a dangerous trip to a manger in Bethlehem. I would suggest that because who was born in that manger in that First Christmas, the trip today is equally as dangerous.

(By the way, the only parallel between the trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem and the modern trip from Phoenix to Tucson is the distance: 90 miles.)

(c) 2007 Ronald Friesen