One of our troubles, is that we have...

One of our troubles, is that we have romanticized and sentimentalized the stable and the manger…We see them through the warm glow of our comfortable homes, our candles and our well-fed bodies....Perhaps we have never quite dared to face up to the fact that a stable is no easy place to have a baby...and a manger is no good place for a child to begin life....It was cold, ugly, dirty, and mean in Bethlehem that night, far, far away, as far as you can get, from the golden streets, the pearly gates and the chanting of cherubim and seraphim … all the things that make heaven Heaven.