Oooooh I think you will love Christmas.  There is a lot to tell about Christmas so I think I will tell things one at a time.  Which one would you like to know about first?  Father Christmas (who we sometimes call Santa) or baby Jesus or Christmas Day or Christmas dinner?  What do you think?

Maybe we will start with baby Jesus.  Let me tell you the story – and I am sure one day you will tell me, maybe at something called a nativity play, but I will tell you about that later. So once upon a time, a long time ago there was a young woman called Mary who had already promised to marry a man called Joseph.  One day, when she was probably doing something quite ordinary like sweeping the floor or making the dinner, guess what happened?  An actual angel appeared and told her a message.  No one quite knows what this angel might have looked like, but from what the angel said, it must have made Mary jump to see it.  I think if we saw an angel, we would be quite surprised too, don’t you?

The angel said not to be scared and that because God was pleased with Mary, she would have a special baby, and the baby should be called Jesus.  Mary was surprised because she didn’t think the baby would have a daddy as she hadn’t married Joseph yet, but the angel showed her that God would be the baby’s daddy. Then Mary agreed that she would have the baby.  When she realised what had happened, Mary was really excited about having God’s baby and made up a song and sang it right there and then.  She could not believe that God would pick a young woman like her to have his baby.  Then as soon as she could, she went to visit her cousin Elizabeth and to tell her all about it and hear what she thought.  Elizabeth was very excited too.  Hope was in the air!

One day the emperor said that everyone needed to be counted up (this is called a census) to see how many people were in his empire, so Joseph and Mary had to go to Bethlehem to be counted.  I don’t think that Mary would have been so happy about this idea because she would have to travel on a donkey with her baby in her tummy.  I don’t think you would like that would you?  It would be very uncomfortable and tiring.  When Mary and Joseph arrived after their long journey, they couldn’t find any room to stay in.  It wasn’t like today where you could reserve a room in advance because in those days there was no way of sending a message on ahead to book a room.  In the end someone let them stay in a stable.  A stable is a barn where animals live.  Probably there was plenty of sweet smelling straw to make a bed out of, because this is what animals sleep on, but I think Mary would have preferred a real bed.  Mary had the baby that night and because there was no cot, she had to put the baby in the animals’ feeding trough!  I think Joseph would have moved it right out of the way so that the animals did not accidentally bite baby Jesus.

Just imagine having God’s baby in a busy city full of people being counted.  I wonder if they were counted before or after Mary had the baby?  Do you think they would have been counted as two people, or two and a half or three?  Maybe only Joseph was counted, because sometimes in those days people only counted men.  I’m not sure about babies.

Now, I am sure you might be able to guess what happened next, because what do we know happens when babies are born?  Yes, that’s right, the parents tell everyone!  Usually the daddy sends messages to all the family – when you were born, daddy told your grandparents and all your aunties and uncles, and all our friends.  He sent pictures to people and called people to tell them the good news.  Often the mummies don’t do this because they are tired from having a baby.  This is exactly how it was for baby Jesus.  His mummy stayed quite quietly thinking about how amazing it was to have God’s baby.  But God told lots of people.  Because God is God, he can send angels with news instead of emails, and sometimes he also sends messages in other ways.

First, God sent some angels to shepherds on the hillside looking after sheep.  The angel told the shepherds that a really wonderful baby had been born, a baby who would grow up to rescue people from sad things and to help them all.  Then lots of angels joined the first angel and the angels were all singing a heavenly song, saying ‘yippee, hooray, how amazing that such a wonderful baby has been born, what good news this is!  Awesome!’  The shepherds were a bit like Mary in that they were first really scared when they saw an angel.  But after they stopped being scared, they listened to the angel’s message and then raced off to find the baby.  Sometimes people say that the shepherds gave baby Jesus a lamb, but I’m not sure that baby Jesus would have been able to play with a real life lamb, although it would have been fun if he was a bit older.

The second message God sent was to some very wise people who studied the skies to understand what things meant.  They studied stars a lot so when they saw a new star, they knew it was very important indeed.  Maybe God didn’t even tell them a message, he just shone a bright new star really bright to get the wise people’s attention.  But somehow, just by looking at it, it filled the wise people with joy.  I think you know that feeling when we see a rainbow or sunlight on the sea.  It’s like some feeling stirs in your body and bubbles up to the surface until it becomes laughter and happiness.  This is what happened when people looked at the star.  It made them think that something really important must have happened; a beautiful star had been born, so maybe a baby king had also been born?  So then, when the star began to move, it made people want to follow it.  So the wise people got ready to travel with the star, and they went on camels following the star all the way.  The star stopped right over the house with baby Jesus in it.  So they knew exactly where to go and visit the baby.  Because the wise people already knew the star might be for a baby king, they had got gifts ready for it.  Probably they were a bit surprised when the star did not stop over a palace, but they gave their gifts to baby Jesus none the less.

The gifts are a bit hard to explain properly.  One was gold and this is the easiest one because I think we all know that kings should have gold.  The next one was frankincense.  This is a special kind of perfume – a perfume to show that someone was a king, but also a perfume to show that a new thing was happening in someone’s life.  The last one was myrrh. This one is a special oil that used to be used to put on people who had died before they were buried.  It might be strange to think of giving a baby something for dead people.  This is not something we do nowadays.  But in the case of baby Jesus, it was a special thing because it was like a gift that would one day help him to be prepared for when he died, and to know that he was not alone.  When we are given a gift in advance for a special occasion, it helps us to feel someone’s presence when we get to the event.  When your cousins were getting ready for their first day at school, I gave them some special pants!  They had pictures and the days of the week on them – a pair of pants for each day!  Then on the day when they got ready for school, they could remember that I loved them.

By the way, it’s because the wise people brought Jesus presents that we also give each other presents at Christmas. I’m glad they decided to bring them and didn’t decide they couldn’t be bothered!

Probably baby Jesus didn’t really know much about these gifts until he was older.  In the christmas story it says that baby Jesus’ mummy, Mary, thought about these things in her heart.  It says she ‘pondered’ them.  I love the word ‘ponder’.  It means to let the words stay alive in your heart, just to treasure them.  If you are pondering something, it’s like it gathers more and more meaning and importance over time.  It’s a little bit like tea brewing in a teapot.  The longer it brews, the more flavour it has, until it’s just right for drinking.  So Mary pondered the things and I think that means that she knew the right day to show Jesus the gifts that the wise people had brought, and to explain all about them to him.  I expect Jesus might have wanted to spend the gold straight away!  I wonder what boys in Jesus’ time would buy with some gold?  Maybe a fishing rod or a nice coat like Joseph’s.  Maybe Mary would not have thought it was a good idea to spend the gold straight away.

So this is how God started telling people the news about his new baby; he sent angels, he sent a star, and that’s how the whole story got started and word started to get out that the wonderful baby had been born.  But it was quite a while before Jesus was actually famous.  Before then he was a little boy and then a big boy, and then he had to work as a carpenter for quite a long time with Joseph (a carpenter is someone who makes things out of wood).

Ooh, it’s so exciting to think of the Christmas story.  Who do you think you would like to be like?  Mary or Joseph or the shepherds hearing angels singing or the wise people seeing a star?  Or maybe one of the animals in the stable?  I hope you wouldn’t try to eat baby Jesus!