I am in a musical at my church. https://info.ncchico.org/o-favored-one. I can emphatically confirm this is a Holy Spirit-anointed show. The circumstances surrounding its writing are remarkable. It is not the typical Christmas musical. It’s all about what it must have been like for Mary and Joseph to cement their determination to raise God’s son. They must have (Joseph, particularly) struggled to stay in love and remain faithful amid intense persecution.

Many of us in the show say it’s a Christian Romeo and Juliet story, only with a supernatural twist.

However, this post is not primarily about the show, other than the cultural and prophetic significance.

Ask yourself this: how does the majority of our civilization’s basic cultural understanding see the Birth of Jesus? With Frosty the Snowman, Rudolph and pals, or possibly a fictionalized manger scene? Beyond these cultural icons, it’s basically Christmas trees and overindulging our children and family members with gifts we went into credit card bondage to provide.

There are those whose identity is firmly entrenched in Jesus Himself, who try to keep the Reason-for-the-Season their primary focus. You can tell who they are by a large cross illuminated by twinkle lights, the only decoration in the yard.

Jesus’s birth has become an Elf on the Shelf meme. Not the overwhelming truth of the painful circumstances surrounding that time.

From the beginning, after Gabriel made the annunciation, life for Mary and her family and Joseph and his family (after Joseph was set straight by his own angelic visitation) was filled with gradually increasing ridicule and rabbinical ostracizing based on a legalistic set of rules brutally enforced down to the gnat’s behind. Plus, the psychopathic and megalomaniacal puppet-rule of Herod.

Joseph and Mary’s walk from Nazareth to Bethlehem would have been grueling for Mary. Riding a donkey? Think about it. How easy/comfortable would it be for a woman, about to give birth, to ride on the back of a small donkey bumping on down the path, straining under the load of a human squirming around in pain on its back?

Needless to say, they were probably some of the last census refugees to stumble into Joseph’s clan’s home, King David’s line of the Tribe of Judah.

Bethlehem would have been overflowing with every branch of David’s lineage crowding into town. Joseph’s only hope was to find room in his uncle’s house. Surely they would have mercy on their situation. Mary was deep into labor at this point.

His uncle’s house was overflowing with relatives. And one of his first cousins was already occupying the guest room in the house. Many of the clan were sleeping in tents or hastily built Sukkahs.

When Joseph and Mary announced themselves at the door, every Jewish mother recognized the situation at once and swarmed Mary. No Jewish mother or father would ever turn away a woman in the throes of childbirth. The men in the family most likely gathered around a large bonfire in the yard while the women did what they do after being shooed out of the house to make room for the birth.

Later that night, after Jesus was born, the men set up a sukkah, a tent-like structure, with one of the wooden feeding troughs lined with hay and sheepskins.

It is a cultural impossibility for Joseph and Mary to be turned out into the night and relegated to an abandoned sheepherder’s shelter out in a field away from their clan. Jesus came for these ordinary people, not the wealthy and powerful. He wasn’t there to kick the Romans out. He was fulfilling prophecy. His birth was a sign not only for the line of the most famous King of Judah but also for the animal kingdom and for the very ground of Creation.

Spiritually, this event is a loving miracle given by the Father, supported by the Holy Spirit, and humbly and gladly sacrificed by The Son. This birth was the birth of true eternal hope.

But the danger didn’t stop with a successful birth after the Magi innocently spilled the time of the advent of the Messiah. The bloodthirsty, functioning psychopath Herod knew the prophecy about the coming king and was bound and determined to nip that one in the bud.

Jesus was warned and escaped to Egypt.

How do you put any of these things — except maybe the manger scene — on a seasonal postage stamp? Do you think the Lord may be fed up with our making His Son’s birth into an icon in a box that we take out once a year and maybe hang on the Christmas tree as an ornament?

Satan is happy we keep this cheerful delusion foremost in our minds. Some of our world doesn’t even know the holiday is about the miraculous birth of the King of the Universe, Emmanuel; God is with us.

Originally published at https://dereklhastings.substack.com.