Back to Bethlehem

Whit's End has closed for the evening, and Connie Kendall stands in a tunic and headdress beside a manger while John Whittaker sets up his camera. Whit is building a Christmas display, and Connie has agreed to model for Mary. Eugene Meltsner, cast as Joseph, arrives late because he has been struggling to tie his sandals, and he has to surrender his glasses before Whit will take the picture. Between shots, Connie describes the first Christmas the way she has always pictured it: a halo, a beautiful manger, clean animals, no pain, and a baby who never cries. Eugene laughs at every detail. Whit tells them both that he believes what the Bible says about the birth of Jesus, but that a great deal of what people imagine is only guesswork - and that the real story is probably far more involved and exciting than the songs describe. Rather than tell it himself, he opens the doors of the Imagination Station. Connie climbs in determined to prove Eugene wrong, and as the machine carries them away, Whit reads how Caesar Augustus decreed a census of the entire Roman world, and how Joseph went up from Nazareth to register in Judea because he belonged to the house and lineage of David, taking with him Mary, who was pledged to marry him and was expecting a child.

They land in a crowded inn courtyard in Bethlehem, in the middle of a shouted speech. A young zealot named Judah is demanding to know how much longer his people will endure Roman oppression, and a man in the crowd explains to Eugene that Judah has yet another plan for freedom. The innkeeper Benjamin scatters the crowd, tells Judah to go home and have his mother spank him, and announces that he is a simple innkeeper who wants nothing but peace and quiet. Eugene decides the innkeeper is exactly the man who can help them find Mary and Joseph, and he strikes a bargain: Connie will work at the inn as a servant girl and watch for Mary and Joseph, while Eugene searches the rest of the town. Connie is furious at being handed a broom, and even angrier when Eugene explains that nobody in this century would trust a woman asking questions. Judah, meanwhile, has never heard a girl talk the way Connie does - about changing the oil in a car and building a double-decker sundae - and he leaves promising to come back like a famine. Inside, Benjamin's wife Rebekah reports that an old man named Hezekiah has been teaching in the town square again, claiming that the strange new star is somehow connected with their inn. Benjamin dismisses him as senile, but when Eugene and Connie look through the window, the star is shining in the middle of the day.

While Connie sweeps, Roman soldiers take rooms at the inn. Captain Felix despises the town and everyone in it; the general, Lucanus, takes one look at Connie and calls her a princess rather than a slave girl, which unsettles her more than the captain's temper does. Later, at the well, Eugene admits he has found no sign of a young man traveling with a pregnant woman, and no sign of Hezekiah either. Even so, he is convinced they are in the right place. This inn alone fits what the Bible describes: the star hangs directly above it, it has rooms and an innkeeper, and behind it lies a separate stable. Connie sees only a cave, and Eugene tells her that is exactly the point - the stable of the nativity scenes she knows may well have been carved into rock.

At last they meet Hezekiah, standing beneath the star he says will not move and will not fade at dawn. The scriptures speak of such a star, he tells them, and he has waited his whole life, certain God would not let him die without seeing the promised King. The Messiah will not go to Jerusalem first, Hezekiah insists, but will come here to Bethlehem, the city of David, and will come as a servant. He says sadly that he alone believes it. Connie surprises herself by telling him that she believes him too. When Hezekiah asks Eugene the same question - not what his mind thinks, but what his heart believes - Eugene can only manage that the historical ramifications are worthy of consideration.

The answer never comes, because Felix interrupts, demanding to know what king the old man is talking about. Hezekiah answers that his zeal is for God and not for government, and quotes the promise that from Bethlehem, small as it is among the clans of Judah, one will go forth to rule in Israel. Lucanus grows bored and returns to his men, warning the captain that his own hand closes too easily into a fist, and then leaves him to it. Felix draws his sword on Hezekiah. Connie steps in to protect the old man, Judah comes charging to her side and calls the captain a Roman pig, and the episode ends with a blade at Judah's throat. The first Christmas is nothing like the one Connie imagined, Mary and Joseph are still nowhere to be found, and Hezekiah's lifelong hope hangs in the balance.