Free Republic

Secular Christmas poems and stories, like The Night Before Christmas or The Gift of the Magi, are remarkable in the way they enchant young people from generation to generation. But there is one Christmas story that never grows stale, that is fresh to all ages and places, to young and old, to men and women. It goes like this. In days now far, far gone, Israel was surrounded on all sides by enemies, torn by violence, and there in Israel a young girl, Mary by name, pledged to a man named Joseph, heard a voice, as she thought from...