We all know the Christmas story. Likely when we were young, we had to memorize it (back in the days when memorization was in fashion). Very probably somewhere among your Christmas decorations is a creche with the Holy Family surrounded by shepherds, angels, and wise men. Mine is on the mantel in the living room. Maybe yours is on a table, sideboard, or chest, somewhere special testifying that you know “the reason for the season,” as they say.

In the church where my children grew up, they had the same Christmas pageant every year with each Sunday school class playing an assigned part. Along the left side of the nave were a couple of doors, one into the sacristy and one into the entrance hall. The pageant opened with the teen-aged Mary and Joseph walking slowly down the left aisle toward those doors. As they reached the first one, Joseph knocked, and the door cracked open. A man behind the door shouted “NO” and slammed the door in their faces. The couple continued to the next door to meet the same refusal and the loud slam. “There was no place for them in the inn.” The slamming doors were a vivid reminder of how easily and blindly we shut the Divine out of our lives.

As we come together to celebrate Christ’s birth once again, have we made room in the inn of our hearts to welcome the Incarnation of God’s love, or are we too busy, too tired, too stressed out even to pay attention, to notice Christ’s presence among us?