For me and, I imagine, for my contemporaries, the story we learn of Jesus’s birth is the story related by the school nativity play.
The angel Gabriel appears to Mary and tells her she is to have a baby who will be Christ, the Lord. She and Joseph (who is lucky if he gets more than two lines in the whole thing) go to Bethlehem on a donkey, find no room at the inn but are permitted to bed down in a stable, where they have the baby and lay him in a manger. Shepherds and three kings visit in quick succession, and we all sing “Away in a Manger”. The end. It will not surprise the reader to learn that this story appears in none of the Gospels.
