In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to their own town to register.

My high school Geography teacher, Mrs Hill (no joke) told me I should work for the Australian Bureau of Statistics. I think she liked some assignment I wrote about population density in Epping.

Regardless of whether I should work for the ABS or not, I’ve always liked demography the most in the whole scheme of the social science world.

Maybe I’m just a people person.

Here we see a great migration of people as they move to be counted in a census. This of course, is the reality of what happened at Caesar Augustus’ decree.

However, it is also a good metaphor for what we see occurring in the Christmas account.

Much like biblical theology at large, Christmas sees the creation of a grand narrative with individuals’ stories coming together as Mary and Joseph, shepherds, angels, and then, eventually, Magi all move towards one another.

All different folks. Different personality types. There’s no one size fits all in God’s kingdom. But all are valuable. All have a role to play. All balancing each other out in a beautiful symmetry within God’s good design.

Whilst questionable in much of its content, when it comes to a collection of stories coming together to form a grand narrative at Christmas, well, Love Actually got that part right.

Because Christmas is, actually, all about love.

Yours with a reminder in case you’d forgotten,

Alison