Wishes for a calm and Merry Christmas

Our opinion 

The busiest day for mailing, traditionally, is the Monday before Christmas. The busiest shopping day, for the past couple of years, has been Christmas Eve. So it's an understatement that this is a busy week.

It's important to remember, however, that the lines at the post offices and the cash registers wouldn't be there if it weren't for the family crowding into Bethlehem two millennia ago.

Recall the scene: Joseph, with the unfathomable humility of a man committed to a young bride pregnant with someone else's child, takes his new family to his home community for census registration. Like last-minute shoppers having to scramble for ideas when the must-have toy of the season is sold out, Joseph and Mary discover that when you don't make reservations, sometimes all the hotels are booked up.

Some versions of the Christmas story depict the innkeeper as heartless for kicking a very-pregnant woman out back to deliver her baby in a barn. But he's best regarded as helpful, if not downright kindly.

It would have been enough, after all, to have just waved off Joseph and Mary with a "no vacancy" sign. Instead, the innkeeper took pity on them and made his manger available. Historically, mangers weren't the dusty, open-air sheds depicted in modern nativity scenes; they usually were caves. Even so, neither is exactly the sort of maternity ward any of us would expect for the birth of our own child, much less the birth of the son of God.

Joseph made the best of it, and Mary delivered the baby without complications. The Bible doesn't give any details - after all, Jesus' arrival isn't as important as what he did once he got here - but clearly the baby was healthy, and Mary was able to wrap him up snugly and keep him safe and warm.

He's been returning the favor by doing the same for Christians ever since.

Religious or secular, or a little of both, the annual celebration of the birthday of Jesus Christ provides an excuse for hustle and bustle and long lines, frayed tempers and overextended credit. But it also is a time for fellowship and family. After the last-minute rush is all over, just as it was on that night 2,000 years ago, it should be as it is depicted in the beloved song Silent Night: All is calm; all is bright.

After the seasonal storm, may all of us have a calm and Merry Christmas.