Garrison Keillor writes in Salon of teaching about the Nativity in Sunday school in an Episcopal church (hat tip: The Lead):
This magical story is a cornerstone of the Christian faith and I am sorry if it’s a big hurdle for the skeptical young. It is to the Church what his Kryptonian heritage was to Clark Kent — it enables us to stop speeding locomotives and leap tall buildings at a single bound, and also to love our neighbors as ourselves. Without the Nativity, we become a sort of lecture series and coffee club, with not very good coffee and sort of aimless lectures. [Ed.: Oh, really?]
On Christmas Eve, the snow on the ground, the stars in the sky, the spruce tree glittering with beloved ornaments, we stand in the dimness and sing about the silent holy night and tears come to our eyes and the vast invisible forces of Christmas stir in the world. Skeptics, stand back. Hush. Hark. There is much in this world that doubt cannot explain.
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A day in New York can show you such startling sights, including a band of doubting teenagers clustered in church on a snowy morning, that the birth of the child in the hay seems not so impossible after all, even appropriate, even necessary.
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