The Tenth Day of Christmas: Room at the Inn

The chapel we found by surprise at the airport in Berlin, Germany.

Dear fellow Christmas pilgrim,

The innkeeper in Bethlehem has gotten bad press for many centuries, even though he barely makes a cameo appearance in the story. But, was he really the embodiment of uncaring rejection we make him out to be? Really a Charles Dickens scripted evil antagonist? Even as a child, I felt sorry for the innkeeper. Surely he had many pressures on him. Nobody sent him an angel to ask his permission or tell him what to do.

Apparently my kindergarten teacher did not have access to the more recent scholarship that helps to explain what happened that night. It in fact helps us see an extraordinary moment of hospitality in place of what had been thought to be miserliness.

Textual scholars tell us that the word so often translated into English as “inn” is quite misleading. There were inns in Palestine at the time. The good Samaritan used one to house the wounded traveler he helped. These inns were ranged alo…