These are the facts. While we're talking about the facts, let me give you just one more fact that is perhaps the most frequently overlooked reality about Christmas. The fact is that most likely Jesus was born not in a barn, but a peasant's home!

Now that will raise a few eyebrows! But if you're truly going to be more scriptural than sentimental about Christmas you must admit that most likely Jesus was not born in a stable. A stable is never mentioned in the Scripture. Instead it is far more likely that when Jesus was born he was born in a poor man's house.

Why do I say this? There are four reasons: 1) When Luke wrote in his gospel that there was no room for Mary and Joseph in the inn, the Greek word that he uses for inn is the Greek word kataluna. Every time this word appears in the New Testament, it to a guest room in a private home, never to a commercial inn like the Holiday Inn. 2) With the birthplace of Jesus being a tiny village with perhaps less than 100 people, in all likelihood there was no commercial inn in Bethlehem. 3) You can be confident that when Joseph showed up with a pregnant wife in his ancestral hometown, his relatives and family members threw the doors of their homes open to him. This was the character of first century Jewish culture. Joseph and Mary were family and they would never have been put out into a barn or a commercial inn. 4. Most significantly, birth in the first century was a tremendous event in the life of a family and in the people of a village. Joseph and Mary would never have been out in a barn by themselves having a baby. Unlike in our culture where privacy during childbirth is valued, in first century Jewish culture community was valued. Childbirth was a time when the women of a village would gather together and the baby would be delivered with the assistance of a midwife. So the idea that Joseph was the one who delivered Jesus from Mary's womb surrounded by just a few lowly farm animals is totally foreign to the real world in which Jesus Christ came.

But you say, "The Bible talks about Mary laying Jesus in a manger, a feed trough. So they must have been in a barn." Let me tell you what a First Century peasant's home was like. The typical First Century peasant home was usually just one room with four windowless walls. This windowless room was divided into two areas with no wall between the two areas. One area, the larger of the two, was the main living area for the family. This was the place where the family ate and drank, entertained visitors and slept at night. The second area in the home was about four feet lower than the main living area. You would walk down some steps to get to it. And this smaller, lower area was a place where the family kept their livestock and animals. On the ledge between this lower area for livestock and the upper main living area for people, there were holes carved into the floor where feed would be placed for the animals. These were the mangers.

Where did visiting relatives and friends stay in a house like this? Frequently such homes had a guest room (a kataluna) built on the roof of the house. This is where the guests stayed. But Luke tells us that at the time Jesus was born there was no room in these guest quarters. So in all likelihood Jesus was born in the main living area where Joseph and Mary were staying with the rest of the family. Then, when Mary gave birth to Jesus, she wrapped her son in strips of cloth and laid him in one of the mangers in the family living area.