First of all, it was amazing for me to see that Bethlehem lies on a hill about four miles outside of Jerusalem. Following a star to the city makes a lot more sense, when it lies on the mountain ridge looking up from the valley below from the East. Looking up to the city, I can see clearly how the magi were led there by a star.
At the time of Jesus, most people in a small village like Bethlehem didn't live in houses, but in caves. A village would be a grouping of caves, maybe with some rocks built up around the entrance to create some more room. The animals were brought into the caves at night, and pushed into the back side of the cave, and the family would sleep in the front. The word that is translated as "inn" in our biblical account of the nativity, is actually the word for "dwelling places"... There was no room in the cave where the people usually slept, so Joseph and Mary were placed in the back of the cave, with the animals. A manger was a hewn out rock, to feed and water the animals. Our Europeanized visions of the nativity are wrong. Jesus was born in a cave.
The Church of the Holy Nativity bears this out. The birthplace of Jesus is below the church, in a cave. You enter under the altar of the church of the Holy Nativity, and below in a cramped cave, you see where Jesus was born...
Learning all this, and seeing it with my own eyes makes the story of the birth of Jesus even more amazing to me, even more true. And it all happened on Christmas Day!
Check out this link below for a video I took of the Armenian Patriarch entering the Church of the Nativity on Armenian Christmas Day:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0om2fHiOgys&sns=em
It seems that next year's Christmas Pageant at Grace Church need to include a cave set for the birth of Jesus in our production!
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Laura Duggan
Director of Parable Players