
Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus. The story of how this
happened is told in part of the Bible known as the Gospels. There are
four Gospels telling the life of Jesus. The Gospel of Luke tells the
most about his birth, and the Gospel of Matthew tells another part of
the story. The Gospel of John says that Jesus came from God to bring his
"Word" or message to all people.
The Gospels say that many years before Jesus' birth, prophets had told a promise to the Jewish people that God would send them a Messiah,
or holy teacher. Christians believe that the promised Messiah was
Jesus. His mother was a young woman called Mary, who was engaged, but
not yet married to a carpenter called Joseph. Joseph found out that Mary was pregnant
and was upset. He was wondering what he should do, when an angel came
from God to tell him that the baby was the Holy One. The angel said that
he must
name the baby. This was a sign that he would take care of it like his own child.
At this time, the Middle East was ruled by the Romans. An order came that all the people had to travel back to their home town, to put their names on the taxation lists. Joseph took his new wife to Bethlehem. There was nowhere for them to stay, except a stable where the animals slept. This is where the baby was born. Joseph called him Jesus, as the angel had said.
The baby Jesus had two lots of visitors. On the night he was born, angels told some shepherds in the fields that they would find a newborn king lying in an animals' feed bin (or
manger).
Jesus' other visitors were some wise men who saw a new star in the sky
and followed it, until they found the house where the family was now
living and gave the young child expensive gifts of gold, incense and a precious herb called myrrh.
(The wise men are often traditionally called the Three Kings, because
there were three very expensive presents but the Bible dose not say how
many wise men there were.)
All these parts of the Christmas story are remembered and celebrated
in different ways at Christmas: in pictures, songs, plays, stories and
in models that are called "cribs", "creches" or "presepe".