Merry Christmas Everyone!

Every year at Christmas we hear the same story, “there was no room at the inn.” Luke gives us this line without drama, yet it may be one of the most revealing invitations in the entire Christmas story. The Son of God arrives, and the first response of the world is not hostility, but inconvenience. Not rejection with malice, but busyness. Bethlehem was not wicked that night, just full.

Every inn was occupied because a census was underway. People were complying with the law, traveling, organizing, doing what needed to be done. In other words, they were being responsible citizens. And yet, in the middle of all that order and obligation, God slipped in quietly and was missed entirely. That, perhaps, is the first Christmas joke with a serious punchline: humanity was so busy counting heads that it failed to notice God among them.

So, Mary and Joseph end up in a stable, and the King of Kings is laid in a feeding trough. It is a shocking theological statement. God does not wait for ideal conditions or five-star accommodations. He enters real life as it is, crowded, messy, and imperfect. The manger tells us that God is not embarrassed by our poverty, our confusion, or our lack of preparation. He simply comes.

The humor, if we dare to notice it, is that the innkeepers did not refuse God because He looked dangerous or demanding. They refused Him because He looked ordinary. A tired couple. A pregnant woman. No halo. No advance reservation. And isn’t that still how it happens? Christ often comes to us disguised as interruption, asking for time, compassion, forgiveness, while we say, “Not now. Things are a bit full.”

Luke’s Gospel is quietly subversive here. The absence of room at the inn becomes the very space where salvation unfolds. Shepherds, not scholars, are the first to receive the announcement. Angels sing not in palaces, but over fields. Glory appears on the margins. God chooses the back door when the front door is closed.

Christmas, then, is not a celebration of our preparedness, but of God’s persistence. The question is no longer whether there was room in Bethlehem, but whether there is room in us, room for silence in a noisy world, room for mercy in hardened hearts, room for Christ in the ordinary chaos of life.

The good news is this: God does not need much space. A manger will do. A willing heart will do. And when we make even a little room, heaven moves in, and nothing is ever quite the same again. If God could enter the world through a stable, He can certainly enter our complicated schedules, imperfect families, and unfinished faith. May the Child of Bethlehem be born again, this time, in us.

Merry Christmas and New Year Blessings!

Your Priest,

Father Charles Enyinnia