Yusef ben Ya'akov was a carpenter in Natz'rat near the sea of Galilee. He was a good man and a fine carpenter. He was working when he first heard the decree from Rome that all citizens were to return to their family home to be counted. For Yusef, that meant traveling to Bet Leḥem, the ancestral city of David. It meant leaving his home in Natz'rat with his betrothed wife Miriam and walking to the city he had left a few years earlier far to the south. Miriam, at the time was quite heavy with child and due to deliver in only a few weeks.
Miriam, daughter of Joachim left her home in Natz'rat with her betrothed husband shortly after the degree. Emperor Augustus required all citizens to return to their traditional family homes and since Miriam and Yusef were both of the house of David, they both needed to return to Bet Leḥem in Judea. Traveling at this time would prove difficult as she was only weeks away from giving birth.
Yusef and Miriam could not make the long journey on foot so Yusef enlisted the donkey he had used for work to carry Miriam. It was near the end of harvest now and in a few more weeks the weather would grow colder, so now was the best time to move. There was hostile land on the direct path, so they chose to take a safer route to the east, but that also took longer, even with one of them on the back of the donkey. It took a good 10 days of travel to reach Bet Leḥem, and they were glad to be done with the travel.
On their arrival, Yusef was able to locate a very small room to stay in. It was tiny, and adjacent to the stable, where some shepherds had been staying at night. He was also able to find work to keep them fed while they waited for the census counters to mark them counted. In the time that followed, Miriam gave birth to a son and they named him Yeshua as they had both been instructed in dreams.
One clear night several days after the Miriam gave birth, Yusef picked up the child from his bed of straw. The days were getting colder and the stars we shining with a crisper edge. He looked deep into Yeshua's eyes and whispered "You will be a strong boy and I will teach you to be a fine carpenter. You will build and mend, and you will be kind to all you meet."
How could he know, looking down at this tiny child, that hundreds of generations from now, in a land he had never heard of, people would call this child not Yeshua ben Yusef but King of Kings, Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ.
Merry Christmas.
