Garth George: The wondrous story that is surely stranger than fiction

Truth, they say, is often stranger than fiction, and there are no facts more strange than those recorded of the birth of Jesus Christ, the world-shattering event that this festive season of the year is ordained to celebrate.

Unlike some theologians and churchmen, blinded by their own perceived brilliance, I have no difficulty whatsoever in accepting the train of events by which God entered into human form so he could live among us for a season.

I have no difficulty with the fact of the virgin birth, that God through his Holy Spirit chose to impregnate a Jewish teenager, a descendant of King David, as the vessel by which his Messiah came into the world.

It is, after all, no more miraculous than the pregnancy of the elderly Elizabeth, wife of the priest Zacharias, who had been praying to conceive all her married life.

The child in her womb was to become John the Baptist, who laid the foundation 30 years later for Jesus' own ministry, so it doesn't surprise me that the newly pregnant Mary should seek refuge with Elizabeth and that the child in Elizabeth's womb should leap in the presence of the foetus of Mary's boy child.

After all, Mary had been warned by an angel in advance of what was about to befall her and if there is anything in this Christmas story that leaves me wondering, it is that this young girl, suddenly turned into an unmarried mother, took it all in her stride.

(Zacharias, on the other hand, had declined to take the angel at his word, so he was blinded until the day of his only child's birth.)

It is, perhaps, even more astounding that Joseph, a man much older than she, to whom she was betrothed and who had also been warned of what was to come, took it all at face value, stuck with Mary right through her pregnancy and subsequently married her. What a man of faith he must have been.

Yet their acceptance, I suppose, was no greater than that of many other Christian saints and martyrs through the ages since, whose faith in God has been so unshakeable that they have sacrificed and suffered and often died for it.

I have no trouble making sense of the fact that when the time came Mary gave birth in such humble circumstances - in a barn behind a pub in the little town of Bethlehem (aka the City of David). For the first ingredient of God's all-embracing, unconditional love for mankind - the reason he sent his Son to us in the first place - is humility.

As Jesus was to put it later: " ... the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many."

That the coming of the Messiah was proclaimed by angels to a bunch of common shepherds tending their flocks by night in the hills around Bethlehem makes eminent sense, too, since they were people of uncomplicated mind and simple faith for whom God has always had a soft spot.

For, as Jesus was later to say: " ... unless you are converted and become like children, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven."

If the birth of the Messiah had been proclaimed to the powerful, to the kings, princes and religious leaders of the day, Jesus wouldn't have lasted a week, as subsequent events proved only too well.

But the shepherds took the angels at their word ("there has been born to you a Saviour who is Christ the Lord"), raced into town to see the little baby in the manger and went back to their sheep "praising God for all that they had heard and seen, just as it had been told to them".

Still, things were a lot simpler back then and people were probably a lot closer to the world of the Spirit, which didn't have to compete with all the complex activities and often raucous diversions of our modern age.

There wouldn't have been much else going on in Bethlehem on that first Christmas Eve, unlike today when the Christmas season - which seems to start earlier every year - becomes for many more and more demented as the day itself approaches.

Yet there will be millions throughout the world tomorrow and on Christmas Day for whom Christmas trees and Santa Claus and presents and copious quantities of food and drink will be no more than an adjunct to the acknowledgment of the most wondrous event in the history of mankind.

We will remember with boundless gratitude the birth of the Saviour of the world, Jesus Christ, Son of Man and Son of God, who is as much alive and among us today as he was on that first Christmas morning, because he lives in our hearts. And we will remember the timeless words of his mother, Mary:

My soul exalts the Lord,

And my spirit has rejoiced in God my Saviour.

For he has had regard for the humble state of his bondslave;

For behold, from this time on all generations will count me blessed.

For the Mighty One has done great things for me;

And holy is his name.

And his mercy is upon generation after generation

Towards those who fear him ...

And that's a fact.