As I think about the Christmas story as a mother, my heart always goes out to Mary—exhausted from a long, uncomfortable journey; having to give birth for the first time in a strange town, with no-one beside her except her tired and probably bewildered young husband … and some animals. According to the traditional Nativity play, the couple had knocked on the door of every inn in town, until finally, one inn-keeper took pity on them and let them stay in his stable out the back.

Mary (probably) felt nervous

I’m sure Mary would have been feeling nervous about the birth. She knew what the angel Gabriel had promised:

‘You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.’ (Luke 1:31–33)

And yet she also knew that giving birth had always been a dangerous affair, ever since God had told Eve:

‘I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
with painful labour you will give birth to children.’ (Genesis 3:16)

In fact, on the way to Bethlehem, Mary may well have passed by the tomb of Rachel, Jacob’s beloved wife, who had died after giving birth to their second son, Benjamin (Genesis 35:16–20).

Mary (probably) gave birth in a home

Although Mary was doubtless daunted at the prospect of giving birth, the birth may not have been as isolated and lonely as our Nativity plays and Christmas cards would have us believe.

You see, it all hangs on one Greek word in the phrase: ‘there was no place for them in the kataluma’ (Luke 2:7, ESV). This word can mean inn, a ‘guest house’. However, elsewhere in the Gospel of Luke (22:11), this word is translated as ‘guest room’.

Since Joseph and Mary were both from the line of David and all the members of that clan were travelling to Bethlehem for the Census, it is quite likely that they had relatives there to stay with.

Houses of that time typically had a ground floor living area, an upper room for guests and a lower floor or cave below ground for the family’s animals to sleep in. So, when Mary and Joseph arrived, there was no room in the guest room—it already had visitors in it—so they were given a place to stay downstairs with the family’s animals. In all likelihood, Mary gave birth in a house, albeit in the area where the animals slept (hence the ‘manger’ for baby Jesus to sleep in).

There’s a lovely children’s story by Andrew McDonough called Bethlehem Town, which tries to explain this all to children. This illustration shows what houses in that region looked like …

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