I enjoy this time of year because it prompts thinking about Jesus’s origin story. I don’t experience this every year since it’s easy to zone out a little bit when you hear a story retold that you’ve heard 4,000 times, but this year something stood out to me.

Why were Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem alone? They clearly had family and travel buddies. In fact, a huge annual family/friend trek to Jerusalem (90 miles on foot – definitely an involved, multi-day excursion) is mentioned in a later story in Luke 2:44 when Jesus is a young boy.

Maybe it was a detail the authors thought wasn’t worth clarifying. Maybe they weren’t alone. But why then did the author not make any mention of any accompaniment during Mary and Joseph’s debut when he references their family on other travels mentioned later?

And if they were, why were they alone on such a long, difficult trip to Bethlehem the year Jesus was born (when, likely, other members of their family or friend circles would have had to make a similar trip)? Was it because they were a scandal – an unwed couple with a child on the way? Did no one want to associate with them? Were their families and friends embarrassed? Hostile? Afraid? Noncommittal? Thought Mary and Joseph had fallen off the deep end? Let themselves go? Abandoned their faith? Become a disgrace?

How must that have felt…

-LS