Passages from the King James edition recounting Christ's nativity and childhood are illustrated to show how Palestine and Egypt may have looked 2000 years ago.

The Child who comes to help Santa in his time of need reminds us all that Christmas is the birthday of the Lord.

Beginning in the twelfth century, clergy and laity alike started wondering with intensity about the historical and developmental details of Jesus' early life. Was the Christ Child like other children, whose characteristics and capabilities depended on their age? Was he sweet and tender, or formidable and powerful? Not finding sufficient information in the Gospels, which are almost completely silent about Jesus' childhood, medieval Christians turned to centuries-old apocryphal texts for answers. In The Quest for the Christ Child in the Later Middle Ages, Mary Dzon demonstrates how these apocryphal legends fostered a vibrant and creative medieval piety. Popular tales about the Christ Child entertained the laity and at the same time were reviled by some members of the intellectual elite of the church. In either case, such legends, so persistent, left their mark on theological, devotional, and literary texts. The Cistercian abbot Aelred of Rievaulx urged his monastic readers to imitate the Christ Child's development through spiritual growth; Francis of Assisi encouraged his followers to emulate the Christ Child's poverty and rusticity; Thomas Aquinas, for his part, believed that apocryphal stories about the Christ Child would encourage youths to be presumptuous, while Birgitta of Sweden provided pious alternatives in her many Marian revelations. Through close readings of such writings, Dzon explores the continued transmission and appeal of apocryphal legends throughout the Middle Ages and demonstrates the significant impact that the Christ Child had in shaping the medieval religious imagination.

The miraculous events associated with the birth of Jesus are unfolded through the thoughts and experiences of the Virgin Mother.

In the seventeenth century many leading poets wrote poems about Christ’s infancy, though charm and sweetness were not the leading note. Because these poets were university-educated classicists – many of them also Catholic or Anglican priests – they wrote in an elevated style, with elevated language, and their concerns were deeply theological as well as poetic. In an age of religious controversy, their poems had controversial elements, and because these poems were mostly intended for private use and limited circulation, they were not generally singable hymns of public celebration of Christ’s birth. However far from dry academic pieces, these poems offer a wide variety of approaches to both their subject, the infant Jesus, and the means of presenting it. All Wonders in One Sight examines the ways in which early modern English poets understood and accomplished the poetic task of representing Christ as both Child and God. Focusing on the intellectual and theological content of the poems as well as the devotional aims of the poets, Theresa M. Kenney aims to reveal their understandings of divine immanence and the sacrament of the Eucharist.

This meaningful children's Christmas book offers a lesson in the importance of generosity and sacrifice during a season where so much of the focus is on receiving. Ages 4 to 8.