Happy Christmas!
I'm not quite sure whether I should offer Christmas greetings 'to all my readers', 'to both my readers' or 'to anyone who has accidentally found his way to this blog'! Perhaps it is safest just to wish a Very Happy Christmas and New Year to anyone and everyone who may be reading it.
As I shall be spending the Christmas holiday away from Clacton there won't, strictly speaking, be a Tendring Topics posted this week. However, for those who would otherwise miss their weekly on-line read, I'll post a copy of 'The Innkeeper's Wife's Tale', a monologue from the landlady of the Bethlehem Inn where there was 'No room' for Mary, Joseph and their expected-any-minute baby. It was written by my wife Heather and myself seven years ago. I think you'll find it entertaining and not in the least sanctimonious!
The Innkeeper's Wife's Tale
I'll wager that if that Caesar in Rome had asked his wife, she'd have told him straight. 'If you want to count people, and get the answer right, you'll make sure they're not on the move. Keep them in their homes. Bring in the army if you must but don't let them stray until you've got them all totted up'.
But is that what Caesar did? Not a bit of it. He had them trailing all over the country in the dead of winter finding their home towns. Half of them didn't know where they were! That's men for you! Still, it didn't do me and Nathan much harm as it turned out.
Nathan? Didn't I explain. He's my husband and he's the landlord of the Bethlehem Black Bull. We'll never be rich but it's a good little earner. Plenty of hard work mind you. We've got four nice guest rooms and do a good line for the passing trade in ploughman's lunches, shepherds' pies, lamburgers and all-day traditional Judaean breakfasts. We're near enough to Jerusalem to catch visitors to the Temple and the city-going business trade, but far enough away to escape the riff-raff.
We get a few Roman soldiers in. They're not a bad lot (quite like our own boys in fact) so long as you don't allow them a free hand with the wine-skins. Peacekeepers they call themselves. As for government snoopers and tax collectors – my daughter Ruth can spot one of them at five hundred cubits. They get short shrift from us, I can tell you.
Well, as I was saying, that census of Caesar's did us no harm whatsoever. Every room was taken – and in the dead season too.
One night I remember well. The wind had swung round to the north-east and it was bitterly cold, with occasional snow flurries. Yes, of course we get snow sometimes in Bethlehem. From Nazareth – it's somewhere up north – we had unexpected visitors I'll never forget.
It was Ruth who saw them first. 'Hey Mum'. She said (she came to me rather than her dad. She knows who really runs this inn!) You'd better come and see this lot. They want a room for the night. I told them that we were full up but they're not inclined to take no for an answer. The girl seems younger than me and she's expecting – any minute now by the look of her. I didn't think you'd want a dead mother and baby on our doorstep, even if they are only vagrants.
But they weren't vagrants. That was clear at a glance. The man was middle aged and a not-too-badly-off craftsman, I'd have said. The girl was less than half his age – sixteen, seventeen perhaps. No doubt an arranged marriage, but it's not for me to criticise.
The husband, Joseph his name was, was pacing up and down with worry – and with good reason. Ruth had been right about the girl's condition. She had been riding on a donkey but had got off it by the time I got there. She was as white as a sheet and shaking like a leaf, and that baby certainly wasn't going to wait for more than another hour or so to be born.
Well, perhaps I'm a soft touch, but when I learned that her name was Mary, the same as the young daughter I'd lost to a fever a few years earlier, I knew I had to help. 'Come into the kitchen Love', I said, 'Sit down and have a hot drink. You can't have a room because we haven't got one – but we'll get you out of the cold somehow'.
Then it came to me – the stable. It was part of the inn and had always been bigger than we needed. It would take them – and their donkey too.
'Nathan', I shouted, 'We've got a lady in distress here. Get a couple of your good-for-nothing regulars to come round to the stable and shift those bales of hay to make a nice warm and private place for her to have her baby. Tell them it'll earn them a free drink each.
And so they did. In half an hour we had a little nest in that stable as warm and comfortable as any bedroom in Herod's palace – and a lot nicer people in it too than he'd be likely to have!
'Now it's our turn', I said to Ruth, 'Get that Joseph out of the way. Set him up with a lamburger and a pint in the lounge, and come back with hot water and towels'. Well, as you may have guessed – the baby was born just before midnight; as lovely a little boy as I have ever seen. They called him Jesus. When we told those regulars in the bar who'd helped with the hay, they were so pleased you'd have thought they had produced the baby themselves.
Nor was that the end. Before the night was over some shepherds turned up demanding to see the baby. They said that they'd had a message from some angels about him – I know what you're thinking, but they were stone cold sober. I'd know if anyone would!
After that events moved swiftly. A guest room became vacant and we were able to let Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus have more suitable accommodation. Mary regained her strength and they made their formal visit to the Temple.
Just as Joseph was planning their return to Nazareth a camel caravan arrived from the east. Travelling with it were three wealthy foreigners bringing gifts for the new baby. It seems that they were magi – some kind of holy men – who claimed that a study of the stars had told them that what we now thought of as our baby was destined to become a king who would change the whole world.
Hussein, the caravan captain who had brought the magi to Bethlehem, terrified us by warning us that King Herod had learned of the baby's birth and was likely to regard him as a threat.
That could have spelled disaster for us all so – sorry as we were to lose them – we felt safer when Joseph, Mary and Jesus departed the next morning for Egypt while the Magi's caravan headed off in the opposite direction.
You'll have heard of the terrible events that followed. Hussein had been right. Herod did regard the baby as a threat and sent his troops to slaughter every babe and toddler in Bethlehem.
I'm glad to say that some escaped. We hid two in our cellar. Roman soldiers would probably have searched the Black Bull from rafters to cellar and found them. However Herod's rag-tag militia quailed before my angry glare and slunk away. I know too that some of the soldiers – perhaps they had babies of heir own – were less bloodthirsty than their master. Several ignored babies sleeping peacefully in their cots and came out to show their officers sword-blades crimson with goat's blood.
It was six years before we learned that, after Herod's death, that little family returned safely to Nazareth. Another six years have passed since then and we've kept in touch. The last thing I heard was that young Jesus had been having a long chat with the doctors of the Law in the Temple. Think of that – at twelve! He'll go far that boy – and I was there at the very beginning!
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After several unsuccessful attempts at including illustrations with Tendring Topics….on Line, I think I have discovered where I was going wrong. The above picture of Heather and myself is one that I very much like. It was taken by our younger son Andy during a long-ago Happy Christmas holiday. If this attempt at illustration is successful you may expect occasional pictures on future blogs.
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