It’s nearly that time of year where we again celebrate celestial mathematics (‘Hark the herald angles sing’), and laundry sessions (‘While shepherds washed their socks by night’), and appearances of Mary Shelley’s monster (in the presentation of gold and Frankenstein and myrrh). They’re the grammatical glitter of Sunday School Christmas plays and church bulletins, but mostly innocent slips of speech and happy homophones.

I wonder if the real shepherds, in the real Christmas story, thought they had perhaps misheard the announcement about a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger. Was that ‘manger’, or did they say ‘manager’, as in, to ask the manager at the local hostel if there was someone who had just had a baby. Or did they say ‘major’? As in, to search for a child in the most prominent part of the city, perhaps at some major landmark. But manger! That’s a rough feeding trough for animals. Surely not.

Angels tend not to mispronounce, and at that first Christmas no slip of speech was made. Such was the mystery of God and sheer wonder of grace, that the holy Lamb of God would be not be found lying in a gilded crib in some garrisoned castle, nor in a freshly painted nursery at some luxury resort, but in a lowly manger. And our response at Christmas ought to be equally clear and decisive, not slurring our carols ‘round John Virgin’, ‘who makes the nations prudes’, but with a crisp Hosanna and certain Hallelujah.