From one year to the next, nothing changes as much as Christmas, and nothing stays the same as much as Christmas. The presents under the tree are totally different every year, but the tree has to be the same. Have you noticed? Or take this magazine article in 1837: “What is the intent of the Christmas holy days?” asked the journal John Bull on Christmas Day 1837. “The merest child would give the correct answer----to eat plum-pudding and see the pantomime.” Collect a million wish-lists from kids or adults and these two things, plum-pudding and pantomime, so dear to the people of the 1830s, will not appear today. Christmas is always changing and always the same.

One feature of the nativity story that never changes is the shepherds.

Who were first visited by the angels? Who were first to be inf…