Thanks to the likes of decorative holiday manger scenes, Hollywood movies, and elementary school reenactments, the nativity story is now so ingrained in many of our minds that we could probably recite a fairly accurate version of it—including everything from the Three Wise Men to there being “no room at the inn.”
But given that this story now has a 2,000-year-old history behind it (and that it has been passed and translated from one language to another over the centuries, moreover), it’s only natural that some of the precise details of the birth of Jesus have become a little hazy, if not lost to the mists of time altogether. The truth behind five of these nativity myths and legends is explored here.