If we could change some of our images of the Christmas story, it would mean more to us. If we could get the birth narrative straight, it would not be diminished but enriched.

Luke records the incident of Christ's birth in a very simple and a very beautiful way: "[Mary] gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn."

Regardless of the stories that we have been told and hear about the little Bethlehem hotel being full, in spite of all of the criticism that we have heaped upon the innkeeper because he sent pregnant Mary outside to a cold stable, and no matter how many stables are erected in homes and on church parking lots - there is the possibility that Jesus was not born in a stable. The Gospel…