“And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.”

Luke 2:7

Musical chairs: I wasn’t ever really a fan. I can still see the scene from my kindergarten: small, wooden, round-topped chairs in a circle facing outward, one fewer than the number of us walking around them while some music played. Our teacher arbitrarily stopping the music and everyone scrambling to find a seat . . .

. . . except one lost soul for whom there was no chair left: me.

I don’t know what tore me up more about this “game,” the idea that I was left outside the circle, or the scrabbling of some of the more desperate to force-fit two people into a single chair, or the staring grins of those seated, “Music’s stopped. I’ve got mine. I’m in. You’re . . . out.”

And then, as if that humiliation were not enough, we had to then remove a chair, and repeat the entire cycle so others who had previously been included could eventually know the public and private sting of being excluded.

Childhood can be brutal. But is it possible there may be, even in this nightmarish game, ideas that began with Jesus’ birth 2,000 years ago that can help us today?