Stranger Than Fiction

No, this is not a posting about the Will Farrell movie, although, yes, I did recently see it, and yes, I enjoyed it.

Actually, that old saying, "The truth is stranger than fiction" is what popped into my head in a sort of Deep Thought Moment after seeing "The Nativity Story," the new live-action film that follows much of the Biblical Christmas story, complete with a jealous King Herod, the Virgin Mary, the shepherds and their sheep and (What Many Have Always Assumed To Be) The Three Magi.

I think what most struck me about the film was the reminder how very human these folks were, that they had to toil in a poverty-stricken existence where, nevertheless, some serious social stigmas prevailed. Oddly, or perhaps naturally, given my current career as a journalist, I pictured news headlines for what could have been the Nazareth Enquirer, had such a thing existed back then. "Nazareth leaders aghast at girl's 'miraculous conception' claim" "Family divulges fears"
"Mute priest finally speaks after year of silence" and "Sages seeking celestial sign."

The story gets repeated a lot, yes. Yet somehow, it seems I haven't clued in to the fact that, for that day and age, all the things I just take in stride -- immaculate conception, a herald angel choir singing to sheep herders, Away in a Manger, etc. -- must have been unfathomably shocking. And that's just for those who experienced them! How much harder would it be for the cynical to tolerate, let alone accept or attempt to understand all the impossible things they heard?

I'll be honest: six years in journalism have jaded me far more than I would have thought possible. So it's easy for me to picture the would-be staffers at the Nazareth Enquirer rolling their eyes and muttering "yeah, right" had they been sent out on assignment to cover a young, unwed mother giving gut-wrenching birth in some gosh-I-hope-that's-sanitary straw five feet away from smelly, noisy animals. Can't you just hear the reporter muttering under their breath? "Virgin birth? Um, yeah, is that what kids are calling it these days?"

I mean, what could possibly EVER convince them to put any kind of stock in the stories of some sleep-deprived shepherds whose solitary line of work would generate letters to the editor that begin with: "It was so sad to read about the poor, confused man who thought he saw a mass choir of angels singing in the hills outside Bethlehem the other night. It was even sadder to read of the fellow shepherds that encouraged him in the delusion. Why can't the good people of this community build a center where these vagrants can receive the medication and rest they so clearly need?"

See? A cynical response is so much easier. It takes less effort to dismiss the whole thing, to shun the pregnant teenager, to send the shepherds off for a nap, to assume the astronomers from the Orient got their signs crossed, than to consider that the truth might really be stranger than the wildest fiction you ever thought you'd hear.

It's a lot harder to dismiss though, when the filmmakers are inviting you to see people as human beings and not just characters in a story, no matter how familiar.