How Did Mary Actually Get to Bethlehem?

You dread the holiday drive. Six hours of traffic, and someone in the back asking if you're there yet.

Now rewind two thousand years. A census means everyone goes back to their family's town, and Joseph's family town is Bethlehem. From Nazareth, that's about ninety miles.

You and Yoni are on the same road. On foot, that's most of a week. Dusty hills by day, cold nights, sleeping wherever you can find a wall.

Yoni knows a shortcut, straight over the hills. By the second day, you both understand why everybody else takes the long way.

Now picture the Christmas pageant: Mary, riding a gentle little donkey. Here's what Luke actually says. Joseph went to be registered with Mary, who was expecting a child. That's all.

The donkey shows up generations later, in the second century, in a book that never made it into the Bible, the Protoevangelium of James.

Maybe they had a donkey. Luke just doesn't say. What he does say is enough: a pregnant woman made this whole trip.

Ninety miles of hills and cold nights. And at the end of it, a town so full there was no place in the guest room.

Your car has heated seats and a phone telling you where to turn. She had a long road and two tired feet.