THE CHRISTMAS MANGER

While waiting (interminably) for Richard's Christmas Special that he's threatened promised to deliver on one or all of his three 'Bass Bag' blogs, I thought that I'd do another post on the 'Christmas Origins' theme.

I've done these before as you may remember:



CHRISTMAS LETTERS


CHRISTMAS CRACKERS


CHRISTMAS TREES


CHRISTMAS CARDS


CHRISTMAS PRESENTS


CHRISTMAS LIGHTS


This time an explanation of the origin of the Christmas Manger is due for discussion.

In the Gospel of Luke an angel is described as announcing the birth of Jesus to shepherds who visited and found Jesus lying in a manger which is a trough for cattle feed. He was said to be surrounded by Mary, Joseph and some farm animals.
Luke then recounts how some wise men followed a star to the house and also found Jesus in the cattle trough with Mary and Joseph standing beside it..

Now this isn't likely to be true.
Jesus wasn't born a peasant what with him being the son of god and all and was probably fabulously wealthy so that old nativity scene as first mentioned by Luke and later embellished by Francis of Assisi was a bit of codswallop. Mary for sure would have preferred to stay in the 'big house' with her beau.

Mary's 'beau' of course wasn't poor old Joseph. As you will remember Joseph, Mary's husband was cuckolded by The archangel Gabriel who knocked her up on god's instructions and they both made out to Joseph that Mary miraculously conceived the son of god. Joseph sort of went along with this but most likely wasn't convinced.

The manger story and image as first mentioned by Luke in his gospel and later recreated by St Francis is more likely to have started from the shepherds and then the wise men arriving to find Joseph sleeping out there. Joseph probably was taking his turn to look after the baby Jesus as Mary was obviously otherwise engaged. If Luke had actually been there and saw Joseph sleeping in the trough with Jesus beside him it's unlikely, out of embarrassment that he would have gone into the 'big house' to see where Mary was and instead scribbled out the bucolic scene that we are now all used to.

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