When Mary Met Joseph,

The Love Story that Gave Us Christmas

Yes, we’ve all heard the story of the first Christmas a thousand times over, right out of the Infancy Narratives–the first two chapters–of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. But I’m going to guarantee you’ve never heard it told quite like this: that is, by Mary and Joseph themselves.

So grab a cup of hot cocoa, settle comfortably into your favorite recliner right in front of the fireplace–wait until it’s snowing at least a foot or so outside the window–and enjoy Mary’s heartwarming take on the trials and tribulations she endured, … ahem, being the most perfect woman ever created by a loving God, as every marriageable fella in Nazareth began pestering her father for her hand. And, if it hadn’t been for her God stepping in occasionally, nudging her here and there a little, she might never have stumbled onto her Joseph.

And whoa is poor Joseph as well, being quite a bit older than all of his fellow carpenter and stonecutter friends, most of whom had already been married by the time they reached 17. And he’s WAY over that! So they kid him from all sides about his crazy notion of praying for God to match him up with some woman. Well, they tell him, that’s his problem right there! But then one of them talks about this Mary woman he’d met who was, in the words of the town matchmaker, “everything any man could ever want, but one whom few men would be worthy of.”

But the divinely-ordained adventure rapidly accelerates once they finally meet, fall in love, get  betrothed, only to have both Joseph and Mary on the brink of depression when Mary turns up with child, but not Joseph’s.

But once again God offers a crucial assist, and so we continue the story, from their combined points of view now, as they tell us what really happened on that magical journey to Bethlehem for the census, with the snow bearing down, no room in an inn, and how it happened that they ended up in a back-alley stable, with only the hapless, completely inexperienced and clueless Joseph to assist with the birth. It clearly took a miracle. But then the shepherds and magi from the east show up that same night with some astounding revelations, and a few foreboding warnings.

The story closes with their personal account of the circumcision of their son, their presentation of him in the Temple, and even how they experienced the horrible slaughter of the innocents at the order of King Herod, forcing them to escape, but only by the grace of God again, as they embark on their flight to Egypt.

The final extensive chapter of this work attempts to explain the author’s reasons for handling these various episodes in the manner he does. It is simply a possible, slightly plausible historical fiction, to be sure, but one that does not contradict anything presented to us by Matthew or Luke. In fact, the story treats their Gospel stories as history, plain and simple, even though all Biblical scholars recognize that is simply not the case. It is, however, the story we have all been raised with.

The primary purpose in writing a story like this is to bring alive for readers the persons of Mary and Joseph as people very much like all of us, with many of the same challenges and emotions we all encounter, although with the understanding that this man and woman were likely cut from a slightly better cloth than any of us.