Blessed is this sweet newborn whom they call literature. Its eyes never doze for an instant, but remain open and wide as the hori-zon, seeing what is seen and what is unseen; and its ears remain attentive, so that no melody passes without ringing within them. And when it has seen and heard, it yearns to show what has reached its senses to those whom life has kept blind and deaf — and how many they are! — so its lumi-nous fingertips strike up melodies, and its delicate lips murmur faint strains; and when the breeze carries them off, the sea roars at the force of their clamor.

It is natural, then, that lit-erature should have made the acquaintance of the Nativity, and this friendship that has embraced the two of them is no strange novelty. Hence we have this broad literary domain which we mark with the name "the literature of the Nativity."

As with lovers, whose two souls meet before they are born, literature and the Nativity met centuries before the Nativity. Ancient literature told of the Nativity that was to come, and people read it and said: prophecies sent forth by these inspired men. They read the poets of Palestine, homeland of the Nativity — Isaiah, describing the flame of light that the dwellers in the land of darkness would behold, and the child who would bear the govern-ment upon his shoulders and be called Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. They read in his book of that shoot which would spring up and bear fruit, of the child who would slay the wicked with the very breath of his lips and would rule the earth, so that in his reign the wolf and the lamb would lie down together and the cow and the bear be friends. And they read in Micah of him who would come forth from little Bethlehem, the meek village among villages. And they read, in that band of prophet-poets, many poems about Emmanuel and his birth. Indeed, they read in the Torah as a whole a magnificent epic, moving in stages from the creation of the world to the sin, to humanity's struggle, until it reaches salvation through the Nativity and what followed it.

Literature and the Nativity met centuries before the Nativity in the Hebrew literature of Palestine, and they met years before the Nativity in the Latin literature of Rome, when Virgil penned his fourth eclogue, telling in it of a newborn soon to be sent into existence, who would restore to the earth her golden age; with him would come innocence and truth, and peace would fill the uni-verse. People read this and looked about in astonishment, asking: whom did the lord of the Latin poets mean? And the pious men of the Middle Ages said: he meant the child of the Nativity — and so they called Virgil the prophet. Do you see how a mantle of prophecy is woven out of poetry?

The two lovers meet, and in the glance of their meeting you find the distillation of generations; but what they say is whispers and murmurings — sweet whispers and magical murmurings. Such was literature's telling of the Nativity when the Nativity came. Such were the two brief, sweet chapters, one written by Matthew and the other by Luke — two men of letters from Palestine — in Greek; and behold, people memorized what the two had said and treasured it in their breasts. And behold this description of the angel's annunciation, the journey to Bethlehem, the birth in the manger, the gifts of the Magi, the glad tidings of God's host to the shepherds, and the heavenly strain rendered in the words: "Glory to God in the highest,

and on earth peace, good will toward men" — behold, all of this becomes part of world literature, which we repeat every year as though it were new, as though its magic were untouched.

And they part — and what two lovers do not part? — yet each is faithful to the other, swearing to him that if he forgets him, let his right hand forget her cunning. Can we say, then, that the two have parted? In the breathings of separation there are perfumes whose fragrance is the fragrance of the embrace... And so the literature of the Nativity after the Nativity became a sea, wide and deep, in which you may swim if you wish; but you return having crossed no more than a few arm-spans of it.

Some of this literature is religious: in theology there are studies upon studies of the Nativity and its problems; in preaching, at least one sermon a year from every preacher in every church on this inhabited earth; and in religious poetry, in all languages, hymns beyond counting about the Nativity. And some of this literature is purely literary, appearing to the reader now in the form of a play, now in the form of a novel, now as a short story, now as a poem. It is not the intention here to give a "list of references" consisting merely of an enumeration of all that has been composed in the various languages of literature connected with the Nativity — that would require many pages. But we may affirm that world literature has been deeply influenced by the Nativity: apart from the books that recount the life of Jesus and devote a portion to his birth, we find the literature of the Nativity in independent pieces. There is the drama: the reader knows that English drama would never have come into existence but for centuries of religious drama performed by monks and priests within monasteries and churches, who naturally turned their backs on the plays of the classical writers of Athens and Rome and went back, for the substance of their plays, to the depths of the Holy Scriptures, where they found rich material in the tales and events — foremost among them the Nativity. So they acted