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THE REAL STORY OF CHRISTMAS. Without ox and without donkey, no Nativity, and not even Christianity. And no saviour, according to the prophets of the Old Testament.
By Laurence Moreau
Published on
” EBetween the ox and the gray donkey sleeps, sleeps, sleeps the grandson,” says a Christmas song. Jesus sleeping on the straw, and warmed in the winter night by two brave quadrupeds: this is how the Christian tradition describes the first hours of Christ, offering two humble animals a major role, that of ensuring the survival of the child God. We must never despise the most humble. This is one of the lessons of Christmas.
However, the Gospels of Matthew and Luke – the only canonical texts and therefore recognized by the Church to recount the birth of Jesus – say nothing about the presence of these animals at the Nativity. It is in the apocrypha, these first texts of Christianity discarded by the Church because unreliable, that we find the trace. So the Proto-Gospel of James…
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