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How Far to Bethlehem?
Norah Lofts remarkable novel retells the story of the Nativity from the Annunciation to the Birth of Christ, and in it she has sought to reveal the motives and emotions of the characters as they converged on the humble stable in Bethlehem. With immense care and a superb sense of history she has re-created this most wonderful of tales with compassion, understanding, freshness and faith. It opens in Nazareth where Mary, who has been visited by the Angel Gabriel, prepared for her forthcoming marriage to Joseph and shows with astonishing clarity the fears and joys she felt as she learned of her appointed task. The author has combined all her talents as historian, psychologist and writer to produce a novel which is scholarly, moving and intensely readable.
300 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1964
About the author
Norah Lofts
99 books319 followersNorah Ethel Robinson Lofts Jorisch (27 August 1904–10 September 1983) was a 20th century best-selling British author. She wrote over fifty books specialising in historical fiction, but she also wrote non-fiction and short stories. Many of her novels, including her Suffolk Trilogy, follow the history of a specific house and the residents that lived in it.
Lofts was born in Shipdham, Norfolk in England. She also published using the pseudonyms Juliet Astley and Peter Curtis. Norah Lofts chose to release her murder-mystery novels under the pen name Peter Curtis because she did not want the readers of her historic fiction to pick up a murder-mystery novel and expect classic Norah Lofts historical fiction. However, the murders still show characteristic Norah Lofts elements. Most of her historical novels fall into two general categories: biographical novels about queens, among them Anne Boleyn, Isabella of Castile, and Catherine of Aragon; and novels set in East Anglia centered around the fictitious town of Baildon (patterned largely on Bury St. Edmunds). Her creation of this fictitious area of England is reminiscent of Thomas Hardy's creation of "Wessex"; and her use of recurring characters such that the protagonist of one novel appears as a secondary character in others is even more reminiscent of William Faulkner's work set in "Yoknapatawpha County," Mississippi. Norah Lofts' work set in East Anglia in the 1930s and 1940s shows great concern with the very poor in society and their inability to change their conditions. Her approach suggests an interest in the social reformism that became a feature of British post-war society.
Several of her novels were turned into films. Jassy was filmed as Jassy (1947) starring Margaret Lockwood and Dennis Price. You're Best Alone was filmed as Guilt is My Shadow (1950). The Devil's Own (also known as The Little Wax Doll and Catch As Catch Can) was filmed as The Witches (1966). The film 7 Women was directed by John Ford and based on the story Chinese Finale by Norah Lofts.
Lofts was born in Shipdham, Norfolk in England. She also published using the pseudonyms Juliet Astley and Peter Curtis. Norah Lofts chose to release her murder-mystery novels under the pen name Peter Curtis because she did not want the readers of her historic fiction to pick up a murder-mystery novel and expect classic Norah Lofts historical fiction. However, the murders still show characteristic Norah Lofts elements. Most of her historical novels fall into two general categories: biographical novels about queens, among them Anne Boleyn, Isabella of Castile, and Catherine of Aragon; and novels set in East Anglia centered around the fictitious town of Baildon (patterned largely on Bury St. Edmunds). Her creation of this fictitious area of England is reminiscent of Thomas Hardy's creation of "Wessex"; and her use of recurring characters such that the protagonist of one novel appears as a secondary character in others is even more reminiscent of William Faulkner's work set in "Yoknapatawpha County," Mississippi. Norah Lofts' work set in East Anglia in the 1930s and 1940s shows great concern with the very poor in society and their inability to change their conditions. Her approach suggests an interest in the social reformism that became a feature of British post-war society.
Several of her novels were turned into films. Jassy was filmed as Jassy (1947) starring Margaret Lockwood and Dennis Price. You're Best Alone was filmed as Guilt is My Shadow (1950). The Devil's Own (also known as The Little Wax Doll and Catch As Catch Can) was filmed as The Witches (1966). The film 7 Women was directed by John Ford and based on the story Chinese Finale by Norah Lofts.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 113 reviews
December 6, 2008
Like many English people in her generation (she was born in 1904), the late British historical novelist Norah Lofts didn't wear her religious faith on her sleeve. In the works from her pen that I'd read earlier, the treatment of characters with strong religious beliefs is actually more often unfavorable than favorable, and there's no explicit literary evidence of a specifically Christian outlook; her usual style is simply to describe normal human life (warts and all) without much commentary. I had promised a Goodreads friend that I'd read and review Lofts' foray into nonfiction, Women in the Old Testament; but before doing that, I wanted to get some handle on where the author was really coming from religiously. This novel, I thought, might offer a good window into that; and I wasn't disappointed!
This is a fictionalized reconstruction of events leading up to and surrounding the birth of Christ. It doesn't take long for the reader to realize that the author is writing from a solidly Christian perspective. The miraculous nature of the child to be born is taken seriously; his virginal conception, the angelic annunciations to Mary and Joseph, the vision of Zechariah in the Temple and the miraculous conception of John the Baptist, the choir of angels proclaiming the news to the shepherds, all are treated as realities, and the scanty details of the biblical record are all respected. Most tellingly, Lofts preserves Gabriel's statement to Joseph that Jesus will "save his people from their sins" (not simply from their foreign oppressors) and calls attention to the novel and significant character of that idea.
Writers of fiction based on biblical narratives often face a challenge in that the stories are so familiar that it's hard to make them fresh. And with this story, so many of the participants are very little revealed in the scriptural text as anything but stick figures; we don't even know how many "wise men" there were, let alone their names or anything about them, and the innkeeper isn't even mentioned in Luke's gospel, though we surmise there was one. If we think about the personalities of the Magi or the shepherds at all, it's usually through a mental lens that makes them a monolithic fraternity of sanitized plaster saints; and even the individual characteristics and traits of central figures like Mary and Joseph are hard to reconstruct. But Lofts has risen admirably to the challenge here. By concentrating on the "unknown" figures of the stories, their backgrounds and motivations, as she moves them to their convergence with historical destiny in Bethlehem, she allows herself ample scope to make the story fresh and new. Even with Mary and Joseph, Elizabeth and Zachariah, she does a great job of fleshing them out, making them real and three- dimensional. Characterization is always Lofts' strong suit, and never more so than here. (And these characters are definitely not sanitized plaster saints; when you read this, you'll see the wise men, and Josodad the shepherd, in ways that you never imagined them. :-)) It's also a strong point of the writing that the supernatural aspects are real, but --as they are in real life-- subtle; they don't overwhelm the normal world, or negate the need for faith. (We often mistakenly assume that life in Biblical times was lived in a kind of miraculous halo, making the exercise of faith super-easy; Lofts makes it quite clear that the ordinary world has always been a place that makes it hard to believe in the extraordinary, and that throws us trials and challenges to the very idea of meaning or benevolence in the universe.) I was really impressed by the quality of spiritual and psychological insights and reflections here, and the way they emerge naturally from the pattern of the story. The plotting, too, is outstanding, like the careful weaving of multicolored threads into a picture where everything fits, and the superintending hand of God's providence is recognizable.
That isn't to say that there aren't some flaws here. Lofts follows medieval ecclesiastical tradition in naming the wise men, and Mary's parents; it's fairly improbable that this tradition has any basis in fact, and Balthazar is certainly not an African name, nor is Melchior a Korean one. (In fact, most scholars would be inclined to see Persia or Mesopotamia, with their attested astrological traditions, as a more likely place for the original observation of the star than Korea). The author was primarily a writer of historical fiction set much later, and in England; her knowledge of the past in this time and place isn't as strong, so some of her details are iffy, IMO. (For instance, while the use of candles is attested in the ancient Near East, I doubt if it was as common as she suggests; I think she was influenced by the King James Version's mistranslation of the word for "oil lamp," which would have been the usual means of illumination.) She also at times reads later theology into Jewish beliefs in this period; despite the Septuagint translation of Isaiah 7:14, Jews of that day did not expect the Messiah to be virgin-born, and the identification of the Messiah and Isaiah's suffering Servant of Yahweh was an insight original with Jesus himself. Finally, contrary to popular Western folk superstition, angels and humans are two different species, and dead humans don't become angels (nor did the Jews in this era imagine that they did). But these are nits, and picking them doesn't detract from the literary achievement here. This is, simply put, an outstanding work of its type, and a considerable feather in Loft's literary cap --perhaps her greatest work.
This is a fictionalized reconstruction of events leading up to and surrounding the birth of Christ. It doesn't take long for the reader to realize that the author is writing from a solidly Christian perspective. The miraculous nature of the child to be born is taken seriously; his virginal conception, the angelic annunciations to Mary and Joseph, the vision of Zechariah in the Temple and the miraculous conception of John the Baptist, the choir of angels proclaiming the news to the shepherds, all are treated as realities, and the scanty details of the biblical record are all respected. Most tellingly, Lofts preserves Gabriel's statement to Joseph that Jesus will "save his people from their sins" (not simply from their foreign oppressors) and calls attention to the novel and significant character of that idea.
Writers of fiction based on biblical narratives often face a challenge in that the stories are so familiar that it's hard to make them fresh. And with this story, so many of the participants are very little revealed in the scriptural text as anything but stick figures; we don't even know how many "wise men" there were, let alone their names or anything about them, and the innkeeper isn't even mentioned in Luke's gospel, though we surmise there was one. If we think about the personalities of the Magi or the shepherds at all, it's usually through a mental lens that makes them a monolithic fraternity of sanitized plaster saints; and even the individual characteristics and traits of central figures like Mary and Joseph are hard to reconstruct. But Lofts has risen admirably to the challenge here. By concentrating on the "unknown" figures of the stories, their backgrounds and motivations, as she moves them to their convergence with historical destiny in Bethlehem, she allows herself ample scope to make the story fresh and new. Even with Mary and Joseph, Elizabeth and Zachariah, she does a great job of fleshing them out, making them real and three- dimensional. Characterization is always Lofts' strong suit, and never more so than here. (And these characters are definitely not sanitized plaster saints; when you read this, you'll see the wise men, and Josodad the shepherd, in ways that you never imagined them. :-)) It's also a strong point of the writing that the supernatural aspects are real, but --as they are in real life-- subtle; they don't overwhelm the normal world, or negate the need for faith. (We often mistakenly assume that life in Biblical times was lived in a kind of miraculous halo, making the exercise of faith super-easy; Lofts makes it quite clear that the ordinary world has always been a place that makes it hard to believe in the extraordinary, and that throws us trials and challenges to the very idea of meaning or benevolence in the universe.) I was really impressed by the quality of spiritual and psychological insights and reflections here, and the way they emerge naturally from the pattern of the story. The plotting, too, is outstanding, like the careful weaving of multicolored threads into a picture where everything fits, and the superintending hand of God's providence is recognizable.
That isn't to say that there aren't some flaws here. Lofts follows medieval ecclesiastical tradition in naming the wise men, and Mary's parents; it's fairly improbable that this tradition has any basis in fact, and Balthazar is certainly not an African name, nor is Melchior a Korean one. (In fact, most scholars would be inclined to see Persia or Mesopotamia, with their attested astrological traditions, as a more likely place for the original observation of the star than Korea). The author was primarily a writer of historical fiction set much later, and in England; her knowledge of the past in this time and place isn't as strong, so some of her details are iffy, IMO. (For instance, while the use of candles is attested in the ancient Near East, I doubt if it was as common as she suggests; I think she was influenced by the King James Version's mistranslation of the word for "oil lamp," which would have been the usual means of illumination.) She also at times reads later theology into Jewish beliefs in this period; despite the Septuagint translation of Isaiah 7:14, Jews of that day did not expect the Messiah to be virgin-born, and the identification of the Messiah and Isaiah's suffering Servant of Yahweh was an insight original with Jesus himself. Finally, contrary to popular Western folk superstition, angels and humans are two different species, and dead humans don't become angels (nor did the Jews in this era imagine that they did). But these are nits, and picking them doesn't detract from the literary achievement here. This is, simply put, an outstanding work of its type, and a considerable feather in Loft's literary cap --perhaps her greatest work.
October 28, 2014
3 astrologers who traveled a long way together for the birth of Jesus by my favorite writer! I own all her books most of which are out of print now but you can still get Jassy! Read this one for Christmas.
December 23, 2025
Head says 4. Heart says 5.
3 wise men (all with different skill sets). None of them officially kings but they are kings in their own right when it comes to the Christmas story. The world would see them as odd balls - a drop-out, a bandit, albeit a leader and a slave. But, as we know, HE works in mysterious ways!
Interesting, useful politico-cultural setting.
Now I feel more ready and in the mood...
3 wise men (all with different skill sets). None of them officially kings but they are kings in their own right when it comes to the Christmas story. The world would see them as odd balls - a drop-out, a bandit, albeit a leader and a slave. But, as we know, HE works in mysterious ways!
Interesting, useful politico-cultural setting.
Now I feel more ready and in the mood...
December 21, 2019
I just finished reading and what a fantastic book. The Three Wise Men are deservedly on the cover because most of the book is about them and their journey. The are fascinating and absolutely 3D people, richly drawn, as are Mary, Joseph, the Good Shepard, the Innkeeper and his wife.
I am already looking forward to re-reading this next December!
I am already looking forward to re-reading this next December!
January 11, 2009
I enjoyed this fanciful tale of the Three Magi. Norah Lofts takes the traditional names and protrayals and embroiders a story that, while taking liberties with tradition, still manages to convey respect and faith. During the events of the story we meet many other characters that turn up in the Gospels, such as Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. We meet the one whom I strongly suspect is the Centurian at the Crucifixion. We also are given a back story for the innkeeper. Even with all the loveliness of the story, life is presented as it is, sometimes hard and not always to our liking.
November 28, 2021
This is one of the first novels I have read that focuses mainly on the three Magi. Lofts writes a believable back story for each of the Magi and weaves it beautifully into their journey to Bethlehem. Each of the Magi has a talent that helps them make their trip and succeed in their mission. A thoroughly enjoyable and very different Christmas read.
January 7, 2013
A really satisfying read.
May 21, 2017
Always appreciate writers who can bring a fresh prospective to a very well known piece of scripture. I'm just not that creative.
August 24, 2014
An entertaining blend of Biblical stories and much later folklore. The nitpicker in me has to point out that Jesus was probably not born on December 25, and certainly not during a snowstorm. Maybe it occasionally snows in Israel, but even in December, a heavy snowfall is unlikely. December 25 was the old date of Saturnalia and Solstice celebrations, which the Church adopted because the people of the empire hated to give up their beloved winter holidays. Furthermore, the Bible never names the wise men as "Gaspar, Melchior and Balthazar," nor does it say that they were European, Asian and African respectively. In fact, the Bible doesn't even say there were three of them, it only says "There were wise men in the east." Their names were a much later Medieval elaboration, based on the assumption that if there were three gifts, there must have been three people to bring them. Not till the time of the Crusades did they also become symbols of every racial group and land mass of the (known) world. Still, Lofts imagines intriguing back-stories for each of them, and plausible reasons forhow these three very different men could eventually come together in a single quest. She also gives them a variety of motives for their journey, both earthly and spiritual, and a variety of disillusioning experiences, ranging from disappointing to horrific, with various pre-Christian religions.
This novel follows the story line of the Christmas pageant that we all know, which is a mash-up of two very different stories of the birth of Christ in Matthew and Luke, respectively. Any first-year divinity school student can tell you that the stories contradict each other; read Bart Ehrmann's "Jesus, Interrupted" for further information on that. Still, Lofts isn't the first or the last to seek for plausible ways that the accounts can be reconciled. If you accept this retelling of the traditional Christmas story for what it is, without demanding historical accuracy, it can be very moving.
Still, the cynic in me has to say that if the magi were seeking a world of justice and peace in which there was no more slavery -- well, we've still got a long way to go.
This novel follows the story line of the Christmas pageant that we all know, which is a mash-up of two very different stories of the birth of Christ in Matthew and Luke, respectively. Any first-year divinity school student can tell you that the stories contradict each other; read Bart Ehrmann's "Jesus, Interrupted" for further information on that. Still, Lofts isn't the first or the last to seek for plausible ways that the accounts can be reconciled. If you accept this retelling of the traditional Christmas story for what it is, without demanding historical accuracy, it can be very moving.
Still, the cynic in me has to say that if the magi were seeking a world of justice and peace in which there was no more slavery -- well, we've still got a long way to go.
March 18, 2009
This is a wonderful story of The Nativity. The author takes the story of the Nativity from the Bible, and fills out each of the well-known characters, with grace and beauty. She brings Mary, Joseph, the 3 wise men, the innkeeper, and others all to life in the most amazing way. I can't believe this book is out of print! But it can still be found in libraries.
December 24, 2012
I read this book every Christmas. It is a moving story of the Three Wisemen and their search for Jesus.
December 15, 2020
Last summer I picked up a pristine copy of this vintage historical novel, and saved it for my December seasonal reading. So many Christmas-themed books disappoint me, but this one happily turned out to be a little gem!
The Biblical account of the advent includes the story of magi from the east seeking out the newborn King of the Jews, finding him via the guidance of a star. Norah Lofts imagined the magis from three disparate geographical areas Korea, Africa, and an imaginary place I was unable to pinpoint. She richly developed the characters and cultures of each wise man, and then deftly intertwined their destinies and mission.
The story of Mary and Joseph, and the shepherds in the fields by night were also woven into the story, delightfully brought to life and fairly faithful to the Biblical account, with only a few minor exceptions.
The author displayed some spiritual depth, which was thought provoking and added a layer of interest. As an example, the slave-turned-magi, Balthazar, had a spiritual hunger that caused him to explore the panoply of religions and philosophies that surround him. He settled on Judaism, only to find out that he was excluded on the count of his being a eunuch. The crushing rejection causes him to half-heartedly embrace stoicism, as a sort of second best alternative. Balthazar found it to be a stark and impersonal creed, but it honored his gift of reason and enabled him to accept his lot in life. "It had one fault, however; it underestimated the importance of a man's emotional life; it was a creed. . . for whole men, for aristocrats, for men whose emotional needs had been satisfied elsewhere."
I loved how the birth of a tiny baby could ultimately fulfill the individual longings and searchings of each character. A very satisfying read, well written and engaging.
The Biblical account of the advent includes the story of magi from the east seeking out the newborn King of the Jews, finding him via the guidance of a star. Norah Lofts imagined the magis from three disparate geographical areas Korea, Africa, and an imaginary place I was unable to pinpoint. She richly developed the characters and cultures of each wise man, and then deftly intertwined their destinies and mission.
The story of Mary and Joseph, and the shepherds in the fields by night were also woven into the story, delightfully brought to life and fairly faithful to the Biblical account, with only a few minor exceptions.
The author displayed some spiritual depth, which was thought provoking and added a layer of interest. As an example, the slave-turned-magi, Balthazar, had a spiritual hunger that caused him to explore the panoply of religions and philosophies that surround him. He settled on Judaism, only to find out that he was excluded on the count of his being a eunuch. The crushing rejection causes him to half-heartedly embrace stoicism, as a sort of second best alternative. Balthazar found it to be a stark and impersonal creed, but it honored his gift of reason and enabled him to accept his lot in life. "It had one fault, however; it underestimated the importance of a man's emotional life; it was a creed. . . for whole men, for aristocrats, for men whose emotional needs had been satisfied elsewhere."
I loved how the birth of a tiny baby could ultimately fulfill the individual longings and searchings of each character. A very satisfying read, well written and engaging.
November 12, 2010
This will always be one of my all-time favorite Advent reads.
December 16, 2018
Many people have attempted to retell the biblical Christmas story in a unique way. Thus far, Lofts' version is the best out there. This book demonstrates intense imagination, detailed storytelling, and creative plot-weaving. Lofts pulled together elements from the relatively brief tellings of the story of Christ's birth from the Bible, as well as details added through storytelling over the centuries, to develop a compelling, beautiful, intricate story that brings everything together nearly perfectly.
If I were to find one fault with Lofts' book it would be that I feel she abandoned the shepherds in the end and left them with a two-sentence "by the way, this also happened but I didn't bother writing the entire scene" sort of ending. However, as deeply as she delved into every other character's role, she can be forgiven for skipping the full scene of one.
Lofts has a knack for filling in the gaps, and her imaginative detail-delving offers significant insight into how the story may have unfolded and how the characters may have came to fill their roles and how they might have felt about doing so. It is an entertaining and engrossing way to experience a familiar, ancient story.
I was left in the end with a desire for more. I want to know how Herod feels when he realizes he won't be given the information he seeks. I want to know how a human couple goes about raising a divine human child. I want to know whether Josodad went home and reconciled himself to his family. I want to know whether Vatinius and Quintilius continue their friendship or bury it forever. I want to know whether Joseph's fellow carpenter greets him with his share of the profits despite Joseph's extended absence from his shop. I want to know how Anne finds out about her grandson's destiny. I want to explore how (or if) the three learned gentlemen end up working together in Jexal. So many pieces of the story I wish to continue sliding into place. And that, I feel, is a mark of a good book.
If I were to find one fault with Lofts' book it would be that I feel she abandoned the shepherds in the end and left them with a two-sentence "by the way, this also happened but I didn't bother writing the entire scene" sort of ending. However, as deeply as she delved into every other character's role, she can be forgiven for skipping the full scene of one.
Lofts has a knack for filling in the gaps, and her imaginative detail-delving offers significant insight into how the story may have unfolded and how the characters may have came to fill their roles and how they might have felt about doing so. It is an entertaining and engrossing way to experience a familiar, ancient story.
I was left in the end with a desire for more. I want to know how Herod feels when he realizes he won't be given the information he seeks. I want to know how a human couple goes about raising a divine human child. I want to know whether Josodad went home and reconciled himself to his family. I want to know whether Vatinius and Quintilius continue their friendship or bury it forever. I want to know whether Joseph's fellow carpenter greets him with his share of the profits despite Joseph's extended absence from his shop. I want to know how Anne finds out about her grandson's destiny. I want to explore how (or if) the three learned gentlemen end up working together in Jexal. So many pieces of the story I wish to continue sliding into place. And that, I feel, is a mark of a good book.
March 21, 2008
I have read lots of Norah Lofts books. I'm one of those people who 'find' an author and like to read all they have written and then get bummed out because there's no more to read. I read most of the Norah Lofts books that the local library has within the last 10 years. Except this one. It didn't interest me until this year.
It was written in 1965 and retells the story of the Nativity from many different points of view; Mary's, Joseph's, a shepherd's, an inn-keeper's, and each Wise Man. Although my religion teaches me some different views about this wondrous event than those put forth in the book, I did enjoy this book. I always like books where 'famous' people are used as characters and can give me a way to relate to them. Where they seem more 'human' than we sometimes think of them.
It was written in 1965 and retells the story of the Nativity from many different points of view; Mary's, Joseph's, a shepherd's, an inn-keeper's, and each Wise Man. Although my religion teaches me some different views about this wondrous event than those put forth in the book, I did enjoy this book. I always like books where 'famous' people are used as characters and can give me a way to relate to them. Where they seem more 'human' than we sometimes think of them.
December 3, 2020
I have always enjoyed books by Norah Lofts, and this one was no exception. It's an interesting "take" on the story of the Nativity, with background stories featuring, of course, Mary, Joseph, and their families, but for the most part dealing with the characters of the three magi in ways that (to me anyway) are a far cry from their usual representation. It was a pleasant, warm, gentle story, a needed change of pace for me.
August 13, 2012
I read this novel of the Christmas story almost every year at this time, and it never gets old. Moving and perceptive, a tale of history, faith, human nature, and the search for meaning in a cynical and embittered world. Beautifully written...the minor characters are just as remarkable as the major ones. A novel, yes, but it makes me think "this is how it happened."
December 27, 2019
This is the backstory of the three wise men, Mary and Joseph, and the journey to Bethlehem. Nicely written and characterized.
January 4, 2022
I loved it! This novel retelling of an age-old story had me hooked. It brought all the peripheral characters alive and I felt I could see them right in front of me.
December 29, 2025
I first read this in 1971. It’s a lovely retelling of the Christian nativity story with a particular focus on the three wise men’s journey. Norah Lofts uses the Bible information but also embellishes it with plausible back stories for all the characters, including the innkeeper. At the end all have found a sense of peace as they witness the birth of Jesus. It’s not sentimental but gentle and enduring.
September 29, 2025
There’s a Norah Lofts’s novel that I’m always excited to read again at this time of the year - her “Michael and All Angels” which is very specifically set on 29 September (today, in fact! and an important “Quarter Day” in the traditional calendar). Reading a novel that’s all about the turn of the seasons is all the more poignant when the leaves are turning gold and there’s an autumn crispness to the air.
This year, for a change, I thought I’d break my own tradition and read another of her novels instead. For at this time of the year I can’t help looking forward excitedly to the colder, darker nights and the run-up to Christmas.
I know, I know - and mincepies already on the shelves at the supermarket, tsk! But I’ve always enjoyed the long build-up to Christmas more than Christmas itself. It must be something from my childhood when “back to school” in September meant the excitement of learning new carols and starting to make decorations.
The nights drawing in make me feel snug and tingly - just the mood for a bit of early Christmas sentiment with a novel that sounds like a Christmas carol.
By the first few chapters I was immediately struck, however, by the distinct lack of sentimentality. Though set in biblical times with all the colour of the ancient-world - shepherd boys, water jars and donkeys - the tone feels realistic and contemporary with gritty dialogue and complex psychology.
The clever use of interior monologue, in particular, gets us right inside the characters’ heads, up close to the thoughts they don’t share with the outside world. For example, there’s:
- Young Mary trying to repress her intense sensitivity to the suffering of others that makes her so different (“Being miserable about donkeys did them no service. So stop it; think about something else. Think about spring” p4).
- Joseph deciding, from expediency, love and one-off drunkenness, to marry Mary in spite of everything (“Man, you’re tipsy! Get to your bed” p22).
- Mary’s mother Anne, assertive and self-assured, but privately fretting about her daughter’s pregnancy (“There was nothing to having a baby, nothing at all, no need to fuss. If you were sick, you were sick and if your back ached, it ached and you bore it without complaint” p122).
- The disillusioned drunken innkeeper, watching snowflakes fall, “Like life, he reflected, his thoughts as idle and aimless as the snow; out of the dark, a brief space in the light, and into the dark again. No permanence, and no point” (p162).
From the very opening pages there are unsettling presentiments of what the reader knows will inevitably be coming later:
- The boy with the overburdened donkey accidentally jabbing young Mary with his donkey goad so that “the point struck into her side” and leaks blood (p11).
- Mary telling the “fundamentally kind natured” but naturally disbelieving Joseph about her Angel, as “the last rays of the sun made a halo about her pale, calm face” (p18).
- Mary feeling “the prick of the long sharp thorns” as she leans, overwhelmed and lonely, against the fence her father Joachim has “planted to keep out the foxes” (p19).
- The rare and valuable coin that Zacharias and Elisabeth give Mary as a wedding present is embossed with “a full-blown rose, exact, even to a thorn” (p51) - a traditional symbol for Christ’s passion.
The novel’s full of random cruelty and harshness, of people being spiteful and hateful to each other. For example:
- “I’m glad your mother didn’t hear that,” said the woman who intended to inform Mary’s mother at the first possible moment” (p7).
- The passive-aggressive kitchen workers in the house next-door to Melchior’s, gleefully giving his starved elderly servant Senya a parcel of rubbish pretending it’s food (p39).
- In turn, Senya venting her bitter disappointment on her unfed pig, vengefully and “savagely” butchering it (p40).
- Innocent young girls in Balthazar’s childhood village thrown live to the crocodiles to appease the tribal god, the Great Crocodile N’Zana (p86).
- Balthazar had been promised his freedom from slavery by a kindly(-ish) Roman master but the cunning greedy heir destroys the document to keep him enslaved.
The characters feel like modern people with their troubled lives full of contradictions, complexes and difficulties:
- Mary’s sharp-tongued, life-hardened mother Anne, worried sick about how her gentle dreamy girl will cope with married life.
- Mary’s gentle and much older cousin Elisabeth, married for forty years and childless, embarrassed and self-conscious (“They’d look on her as a poor self-deluded creature” p50) when her devout husband Zacharias tells her he’s had an angelic message that she’ll be pregnant.
- Melchior who’s clever but “so stupid about simple things” (p30) after a remote life spent in an ivory tower (stone and glass, actually) obsessively peering at the stars.
- Gaspar, the brutal, wily and godless leader of a fierce barbarian army of horseback desert fighters, now reluctantly ruling fallen Jexal (a kind of Babylon?) and thrilled with the new adventure of joining Melchior’s quest.
- Balthazar, enslaved and castrated as a 12-year old, gentle and intelligent, dreaming about “the world made new, with no more slavery, men of all colours made equal, the rich giving their goods to feed the poor” (p102) and joining Melchior and Gaspar in fulfilment of an ecstatic vision.
- Ephorus, the dissolute tavern keeper at Bethlehem, guarding his tragic secret of lost love, and kept “idle, drunken, will-less” (p161) by his bitter disillusioned wife Eunice (“hot and flushed and formidable” p164) who nags husband and guests alike.
- Josodad the shepherd, broken and suicidal with “unassuageable grief” (p183) at the death of his favourite son Nathan (crucified for anti-Roman terrorism).
- Vatinius, the centurion at the Bethlehem garrison, straightforward, hardworking and unambitious - in contrast to Quintilius, his old legionary best buddy (in the romantic sense too) who’s now fat, rich and powerful through hooking up with a senator sugar daddy (p222).
- Herod, King of Judea, cunning, dangerous and with such psychopathic tendencies that he “had on at least three occasions placed policy before paternal feelings and murdered his sons as though they were enemies” (p192).
For people with religious beliefs, the novel might be read, I’m sure, as an allegory of life as a pilgrimage - overcoming distance and hardship to arrive at a state of grace: the rhetorical question of the title as a kind of spiritual cry of the heart.
On the other hand, I enjoyed the novel enormously, not so much for its religious dimensions, but simply because it’s such an intriguing and compulsive alternative account of the historical circumstances at the time of Jesus’ birth.
I was especially fascinated by the multi-dimensional back-stories of characters that we probably only vaguely remember today as children wearing tea-towels in Christmas nativity plays - if they even still happen?
Some of the sentences that particularly pleased or puzzled me along the way included these:
- “The administrative service was now much depleted and about three times as efficient as it had been” (p64).
- “Was it possible to visualise a woman, the ostensible wife of a carpenter, going about her household tasks, with complete right to call herself the Mother of God?” (p131).
- “Well,” [the innkeeper’s wife] said briskly, but not unkindly, “this is a fine to-do. But don’t fret. We’ll manage” (p169).
- “He thought, in plain peasant fashion, that it you knocked on the door of a human friend, once and again and again, and had no answer, you’d conclude that he was not there, or that he was, for some reason, no longer your friend. Did not the same apply to God?” (p188).
- “And suddenly they were all smiling. Joseph with his faith restored, Melchior with his errand done, Balthazar who had seen this wonderful thing, and Gaspar who had found his heart. Even Mary, burdened with the weight of knowledge … smiled, as any woman does, feeling the weight and warmth of her child” (the serene closing words of the novel).
This year, for a change, I thought I’d break my own tradition and read another of her novels instead. For at this time of the year I can’t help looking forward excitedly to the colder, darker nights and the run-up to Christmas.
I know, I know - and mincepies already on the shelves at the supermarket, tsk! But I’ve always enjoyed the long build-up to Christmas more than Christmas itself. It must be something from my childhood when “back to school” in September meant the excitement of learning new carols and starting to make decorations.
The nights drawing in make me feel snug and tingly - just the mood for a bit of early Christmas sentiment with a novel that sounds like a Christmas carol.
By the first few chapters I was immediately struck, however, by the distinct lack of sentimentality. Though set in biblical times with all the colour of the ancient-world - shepherd boys, water jars and donkeys - the tone feels realistic and contemporary with gritty dialogue and complex psychology.
The clever use of interior monologue, in particular, gets us right inside the characters’ heads, up close to the thoughts they don’t share with the outside world. For example, there’s:
- Young Mary trying to repress her intense sensitivity to the suffering of others that makes her so different (“Being miserable about donkeys did them no service. So stop it; think about something else. Think about spring” p4).
- Joseph deciding, from expediency, love and one-off drunkenness, to marry Mary in spite of everything (“Man, you’re tipsy! Get to your bed” p22).
- Mary’s mother Anne, assertive and self-assured, but privately fretting about her daughter’s pregnancy (“There was nothing to having a baby, nothing at all, no need to fuss. If you were sick, you were sick and if your back ached, it ached and you bore it without complaint” p122).
- The disillusioned drunken innkeeper, watching snowflakes fall, “Like life, he reflected, his thoughts as idle and aimless as the snow; out of the dark, a brief space in the light, and into the dark again. No permanence, and no point” (p162).
From the very opening pages there are unsettling presentiments of what the reader knows will inevitably be coming later:
- The boy with the overburdened donkey accidentally jabbing young Mary with his donkey goad so that “the point struck into her side” and leaks blood (p11).
- Mary telling the “fundamentally kind natured” but naturally disbelieving Joseph about her Angel, as “the last rays of the sun made a halo about her pale, calm face” (p18).
- Mary feeling “the prick of the long sharp thorns” as she leans, overwhelmed and lonely, against the fence her father Joachim has “planted to keep out the foxes” (p19).
- The rare and valuable coin that Zacharias and Elisabeth give Mary as a wedding present is embossed with “a full-blown rose, exact, even to a thorn” (p51) - a traditional symbol for Christ’s passion.
The novel’s full of random cruelty and harshness, of people being spiteful and hateful to each other. For example:
- “I’m glad your mother didn’t hear that,” said the woman who intended to inform Mary’s mother at the first possible moment” (p7).
- The passive-aggressive kitchen workers in the house next-door to Melchior’s, gleefully giving his starved elderly servant Senya a parcel of rubbish pretending it’s food (p39).
- In turn, Senya venting her bitter disappointment on her unfed pig, vengefully and “savagely” butchering it (p40).
- Innocent young girls in Balthazar’s childhood village thrown live to the crocodiles to appease the tribal god, the Great Crocodile N’Zana (p86).
- Balthazar had been promised his freedom from slavery by a kindly(-ish) Roman master but the cunning greedy heir destroys the document to keep him enslaved.
The characters feel like modern people with their troubled lives full of contradictions, complexes and difficulties:
- Mary’s sharp-tongued, life-hardened mother Anne, worried sick about how her gentle dreamy girl will cope with married life.
- Mary’s gentle and much older cousin Elisabeth, married for forty years and childless, embarrassed and self-conscious (“They’d look on her as a poor self-deluded creature” p50) when her devout husband Zacharias tells her he’s had an angelic message that she’ll be pregnant.
- Melchior who’s clever but “so stupid about simple things” (p30) after a remote life spent in an ivory tower (stone and glass, actually) obsessively peering at the stars.
- Gaspar, the brutal, wily and godless leader of a fierce barbarian army of horseback desert fighters, now reluctantly ruling fallen Jexal (a kind of Babylon?) and thrilled with the new adventure of joining Melchior’s quest.
- Balthazar, enslaved and castrated as a 12-year old, gentle and intelligent, dreaming about “the world made new, with no more slavery, men of all colours made equal, the rich giving their goods to feed the poor” (p102) and joining Melchior and Gaspar in fulfilment of an ecstatic vision.
- Ephorus, the dissolute tavern keeper at Bethlehem, guarding his tragic secret of lost love, and kept “idle, drunken, will-less” (p161) by his bitter disillusioned wife Eunice (“hot and flushed and formidable” p164) who nags husband and guests alike.
- Josodad the shepherd, broken and suicidal with “unassuageable grief” (p183) at the death of his favourite son Nathan (crucified for anti-Roman terrorism).
- Vatinius, the centurion at the Bethlehem garrison, straightforward, hardworking and unambitious - in contrast to Quintilius, his old legionary best buddy (in the romantic sense too) who’s now fat, rich and powerful through hooking up with a senator sugar daddy (p222).
- Herod, King of Judea, cunning, dangerous and with such psychopathic tendencies that he “had on at least three occasions placed policy before paternal feelings and murdered his sons as though they were enemies” (p192).
For people with religious beliefs, the novel might be read, I’m sure, as an allegory of life as a pilgrimage - overcoming distance and hardship to arrive at a state of grace: the rhetorical question of the title as a kind of spiritual cry of the heart.
On the other hand, I enjoyed the novel enormously, not so much for its religious dimensions, but simply because it’s such an intriguing and compulsive alternative account of the historical circumstances at the time of Jesus’ birth.
I was especially fascinated by the multi-dimensional back-stories of characters that we probably only vaguely remember today as children wearing tea-towels in Christmas nativity plays - if they even still happen?
Some of the sentences that particularly pleased or puzzled me along the way included these:
- “The administrative service was now much depleted and about three times as efficient as it had been” (p64).
- “Was it possible to visualise a woman, the ostensible wife of a carpenter, going about her household tasks, with complete right to call herself the Mother of God?” (p131).
- “Well,” [the innkeeper’s wife] said briskly, but not unkindly, “this is a fine to-do. But don’t fret. We’ll manage” (p169).
- “He thought, in plain peasant fashion, that it you knocked on the door of a human friend, once and again and again, and had no answer, you’d conclude that he was not there, or that he was, for some reason, no longer your friend. Did not the same apply to God?” (p188).
- “And suddenly they were all smiling. Joseph with his faith restored, Melchior with his errand done, Balthazar who had seen this wonderful thing, and Gaspar who had found his heart. Even Mary, burdened with the weight of knowledge … smiled, as any woman does, feeling the weight and warmth of her child” (the serene closing words of the novel).
November 25, 2019
Read for TopHats Dec 2019.
I’d read Norah Lofts, years ago, but never read “How Far to Bethlehem.” I was very pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed Loft’s retelling of the birth of Jesus from the Annunciation and the visions of Mary and Joseph, but also of Mary’s much older barren cousin, who with her husband Zachariah had visions and a son they named John as they’d been instructed.
Melchior, an elderly Korean astronomer who has squandered all his wealth to build an observatory and study the stars and planets, sees and understands the prophesied future birth of the babe who will lead the Jews and sets out by camel to follow the bright star to Jerusalem and a village nearby. Near death of starvation and exhaustion, Melchior meets Gaspar, a great and wealthy warrior leader who decides to accompany him, more to assess the strength of Romans in Jerusalem. The two of them cannot make themselves understood as the travel eastward. A middle aged, black African, runaway eunuch and slave trained as a scribe, fluent in Greek, Latin and Aramaic becomes their translator, bargainer, cook and possessed of his own vision leads them into the Jerusalem gate closest to Herod’s palace, where they learn what and where Bethlehem is, and the danger to the babe from Herod.
“with Melchior as their guide and goad, Gaspar as their (provider and) protector, and Balthazar as their tongue, the three men traveled on to a crowds inn.”
I’d read Norah Lofts, years ago, but never read “How Far to Bethlehem.” I was very pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed Loft’s retelling of the birth of Jesus from the Annunciation and the visions of Mary and Joseph, but also of Mary’s much older barren cousin, who with her husband Zachariah had visions and a son they named John as they’d been instructed.
Melchior, an elderly Korean astronomer who has squandered all his wealth to build an observatory and study the stars and planets, sees and understands the prophesied future birth of the babe who will lead the Jews and sets out by camel to follow the bright star to Jerusalem and a village nearby. Near death of starvation and exhaustion, Melchior meets Gaspar, a great and wealthy warrior leader who decides to accompany him, more to assess the strength of Romans in Jerusalem. The two of them cannot make themselves understood as the travel eastward. A middle aged, black African, runaway eunuch and slave trained as a scribe, fluent in Greek, Latin and Aramaic becomes their translator, bargainer, cook and possessed of his own vision leads them into the Jerusalem gate closest to Herod’s palace, where they learn what and where Bethlehem is, and the danger to the babe from Herod.
“with Melchior as their guide and goad, Gaspar as their (provider and) protector, and Balthazar as their tongue, the three men traveled on to a crowds inn.”
December 24, 2020
One night in Korea an old man named Melchior looked up into the sky as he did every night, studying the stars with always the feeling of wonder and awe. But this night the sky had a different message to impart, one that would take Melchior on a journey across an ocean and many miles where the destination is only marked by a bright star in the sky. Along the way Melchior meets a king from Jexal named Gaspar and an escaped slave named Balthazar from Edessa, each of these men have a part to play in Melchior’s quest and neither are surprised when their journey takes them to a tiny baby in a manger who will save them all.
The Nativity story in my opinion is one of the most cherished stories in the Bible. The feeling of hope always brings me peace and although this book is not biblically correct it also didn’t feel like it took anything away from the story itself. The Three Wise men or Kings however you tell it, traveled many miles to Bethlehem and this interesting tale gives the reader a completely different perspective. It’s a lovely book and one that would be perfect to read during Christmas time! Highly recommended!
The Nativity story in my opinion is one of the most cherished stories in the Bible. The feeling of hope always brings me peace and although this book is not biblically correct it also didn’t feel like it took anything away from the story itself. The Three Wise men or Kings however you tell it, traveled many miles to Bethlehem and this interesting tale gives the reader a completely different perspective. It’s a lovely book and one that would be perfect to read during Christmas time! Highly recommended!
December 3, 2017
Al met al vond ik het een boeiend historisch verhaal met als uitgangspunt de lange maar dringende, negen maanden durende reis die de oude sterrenwichelaar Melchior vanuit Noord Korea ondernam, op zoek naar de toekomstige ouders van de nog ongeboren baby wiens horoscoop hij direct na de conceptie had getrokken, waaruit bleek dat dit bijzondere kindje veel voor de wereld zou kunnen gaan betekenen mits hij de ouders tijdig kon waarschuwen voor de dreiging van een voortijdige dood (door de hand van koning Herodes).
Op een aangename en boeiende manier wordt meer verteld over de levens van een aantal personen die een rol spelen in het evangelie, waaronder (natuurlijk) Maria en Jozef -maar ook Maria's moeder Anna-, Maria's nicht Elizabeth en haar man Zacharias, die de ouders zullen worden van Johannes de Doper, en twee andere wijzen uit het Oosten: Gaspar en Balthasar, hoe zij elkaar ontmoetten en besluiten Melchior te vergezellen op zijn belangrijke en dringende missie, de herbergier, de herders, Herodes...
Op een aangename en boeiende manier wordt meer verteld over de levens van een aantal personen die een rol spelen in het evangelie, waaronder (natuurlijk) Maria en Jozef -maar ook Maria's moeder Anna-, Maria's nicht Elizabeth en haar man Zacharias, die de ouders zullen worden van Johannes de Doper, en twee andere wijzen uit het Oosten: Gaspar en Balthasar, hoe zij elkaar ontmoetten en besluiten Melchior te vergezellen op zijn belangrijke en dringende missie, de herbergier, de herders, Herodes...
March 21, 2021
I first read this book when I was 12 and thought it was amazing. I've often thought of it in the many years since and finally decided to risk spoiling a lovely memory by rereading it. Although my perspectives are quite different now, I was again completely entranced by this retelling of the nativity story. The stories of the various characters, and their journeys, were unfolded by Lofts deft prose in a gentle and pragmatic way. Although the story told in scriptures is well known, this retelling is fresh, more detailed and satisfying. Each of the characters are engaging, relatable and entirely credible and the intersections of their stories cleverly woven together. This is not a religious story, it is more like a reimagining of 'historical' events. I had a few minor quibbles with some sections of prose, disappointments with the handling of certain aspects (eg ending of the shepherds story), and in my new edition the publishers editing was very poor, but these were minor irritations.
Overall it really was a really wonderful story. Highly recommended.
Overall it really was a really wonderful story. Highly recommended.
November 29, 2018
Nora Lofts gives a back-story to many of the personages of the Christmas Story, humanizing these figures, rendering understandable the all too real difficulties faces by Mary and Joseph, the wise men, and others. A few of them are less successful, notable Ephorus the innkeeper. The book is in need of some editing due to repetition and some excess information; nevertheless, How Far to Bethlehem? is a lovely book to read during the Christmas season. I read this for a reading group. I enjoyed it far more than I expected.
December 26, 2020
A lovely book. Can’t fault it. The author has a superb touch, developing fully-fledged characters within a single chapter, some of whom we meet again, others we don’t, but they all have a part to play in this well-loved story. The ‘wise men’ we follow throughout. They’re given unexpected and vastly different backgrounds and motives, drawn together as mutually dependent travelling companions. How their story unfolds is intriguing, and it’s set in a world of rich historical detail.
In the opening chapter we meet Mary and Joseph. Mary’s character is beautifully drawn, a bold thing for an author to attempt but wholly successful, I think. I’d have liked to have seen more of these two in the narrative, but what we are given is a joy to read.
Lofts brings a fresh perspective to the well-known story. She gives an unmistakeable sense of events unfolding according to a divine plan, no matter how perplexing, random or dire the events seem to those caught up in the midst of them. The various characters, each in their own fashion, come to an understanding of this.
For example, Joseph’s reflections, as they prepare to flee to Egypt: ...Micah’s old donkey... had again taken on that deceptive appearance of roadworthiness and Mary, he knew, would insist upon taking it... His faith, like the donkey’s gait, flagged, was restored and then failed again. Another thought assailed him, had it not been for the broken down donkey they would not have landed in this place with the innkeeper so attentive, his wife so competent and both so kind. Nor would they have been here tonight, to be found by this old man who confirmed all the prophecies...It was all - he thought - far beyond the understanding of a plain simple fellow like himself and the most he could do was to blunder along, doing his best from day to day.
Lofts does a great job of depicting how naturally the miraculous intersected with human, every-day ordinariness. At one point Mary muses that perhaps this is their role, to give the child an ordinary human upbringing: ...and how could that be if all the time his parents were walking about thinking that their child was the Son of God? And yet... Mary knows prophecy as well as any, and - most poignantly of all - she knows what fate ultimately awaits the child. One of her steps of faith is that God will give her the strength to bear it, when the time comes.
So, as I say, this is a beautiful book. It’s a perfect Christmas read, one I’m sure to revisit.
In the opening chapter we meet Mary and Joseph. Mary’s character is beautifully drawn, a bold thing for an author to attempt but wholly successful, I think. I’d have liked to have seen more of these two in the narrative, but what we are given is a joy to read.
Lofts brings a fresh perspective to the well-known story. She gives an unmistakeable sense of events unfolding according to a divine plan, no matter how perplexing, random or dire the events seem to those caught up in the midst of them. The various characters, each in their own fashion, come to an understanding of this.
For example, Joseph’s reflections, as they prepare to flee to Egypt: ...Micah’s old donkey... had again taken on that deceptive appearance of roadworthiness and Mary, he knew, would insist upon taking it... His faith, like the donkey’s gait, flagged, was restored and then failed again. Another thought assailed him, had it not been for the broken down donkey they would not have landed in this place with the innkeeper so attentive, his wife so competent and both so kind. Nor would they have been here tonight, to be found by this old man who confirmed all the prophecies...It was all - he thought - far beyond the understanding of a plain simple fellow like himself and the most he could do was to blunder along, doing his best from day to day.
Lofts does a great job of depicting how naturally the miraculous intersected with human, every-day ordinariness. At one point Mary muses that perhaps this is their role, to give the child an ordinary human upbringing: ...and how could that be if all the time his parents were walking about thinking that their child was the Son of God? And yet... Mary knows prophecy as well as any, and - most poignantly of all - she knows what fate ultimately awaits the child. One of her steps of faith is that God will give her the strength to bear it, when the time comes.
So, as I say, this is a beautiful book. It’s a perfect Christmas read, one I’m sure to revisit.
March 7, 2024
Fictional version of the story of Jesus’ birth, written in 1965. (I read it for a reading challenge that called for a book published the year I was born.)
I’d previously read the Reader’s Digest condensed book version but really enjoyed how the characters were fleshed out in the full book.
The book starts with Mary and Joseph individually. They are already engaged but the reader sees a bit of their everyday lives in Nazareth and (I presume) details of life in general during that time. Mary enjoys fetching water at the town well and chatting with her friends. Joseph is shown as a successful if not lonely carpenter. Their reactions to the news of a savior’s birth as told by the angel Gabriel follows the Bible closely but all the other action is fiction.
Next, the reader meets the first of the wise men, Melchior, who is an astrologer in Korea nearly halfway around the world. His back story is fascinating as the now elderly scholar who has spent his life and inherited fortune studying the stars. The reader subsequently meets his companions Gaspar, a desert nomadic ruler and Balthazar, an educated escaped slave.
Other important characters including Ephorus, the innkeeper, and Josodad, a shepherd, are introduced and their backstory is told. Josodad is even revealed to be the father of Martha, Mary and Lazarus with a deceased older brother, Nathan, executed for being a Zealot.
Much of the book follows in alternating sequence, the journey of all to Bethlehem.
Character notes: The wise men, particularly Melchior and Balthazar, are my favorite characters as we really know very little about them from the Bible. I love the imaginative detail that Lofts uses to bring these men to life. She uses real-life locations for the origins of Melchior and Balthazar (Pyongyang, Korea and Edessa, Turkey) but creates a home city of Jexal for Gaspar. I’m imagining him to be like the Turks of the Ottoman empire, strong warriors.
I also really liked how Lofts develops Mary into a believable young woman with very idealistic views. Case in point, when Mary comes across a young boy who driving an old donkey laden with building materials up a very steep and difficult path, Mary insists on lightening the donkey’s load by carrying his load of carpenter nails (also very foreshadowing of the end of Jesus’ life).
I’d previously read the Reader’s Digest condensed book version but really enjoyed how the characters were fleshed out in the full book.
The book starts with Mary and Joseph individually. They are already engaged but the reader sees a bit of their everyday lives in Nazareth and (I presume) details of life in general during that time. Mary enjoys fetching water at the town well and chatting with her friends. Joseph is shown as a successful if not lonely carpenter. Their reactions to the news of a savior’s birth as told by the angel Gabriel follows the Bible closely but all the other action is fiction.
Next, the reader meets the first of the wise men, Melchior, who is an astrologer in Korea nearly halfway around the world. His back story is fascinating as the now elderly scholar who has spent his life and inherited fortune studying the stars. The reader subsequently meets his companions Gaspar, a desert nomadic ruler and Balthazar, an educated escaped slave.
Other important characters including Ephorus, the innkeeper, and Josodad, a shepherd, are introduced and their backstory is told. Josodad is even revealed to be the father of Martha, Mary and Lazarus with a deceased older brother, Nathan, executed for being a Zealot.
Much of the book follows in alternating sequence, the journey of all to Bethlehem.
Character notes: The wise men, particularly Melchior and Balthazar, are my favorite characters as we really know very little about them from the Bible. I love the imaginative detail that Lofts uses to bring these men to life. She uses real-life locations for the origins of Melchior and Balthazar (Pyongyang, Korea and Edessa, Turkey) but creates a home city of Jexal for Gaspar. I’m imagining him to be like the Turks of the Ottoman empire, strong warriors.
I also really liked how Lofts develops Mary into a believable young woman with very idealistic views. Case in point, when Mary comes across a young boy who driving an old donkey laden with building materials up a very steep and difficult path, Mary insists on lightening the donkey’s load by carrying his load of carpenter nails (also very foreshadowing of the end of Jesus’ life).
December 9, 2025
A rediscovered treasure. . .take it chapter at a time, this tale of Melchior, Gaspar and Balthazar, more commonly known as subjects of story and song, such as the oh so hypnotic "We Three Kings of Orient Are."
Am annotating my read, with my notes of this year. . .vowing to re-read often now that we've found each other again.
While I do, the process of going through the different members of that great event, it reminds me of my mother's question to us every year at December dinners around our table. She would charge each one in our family, early in the season by asking us, "This Christmas who will you be? Of all the Nativity characters - however you see them - Who will YOU be? Through their eyes what will you see at the birth of Jesus? Will you be the donkey? Will you be the angel? Will you be Joseph this year? Will you be baby Jesus? Will you be the old barn owl? Will you be the mouse that sneaks in? Maybe you'll be the cow that gives some milk. Maybe you'll be the innkeeper's wife who sneaks back into the stable to help Mary. Maybe you'll be a Shepherd, or a Shepherd's son or a Shepherd's sheep. We'd make our stated choice for that particular year. I chose the donkey more than once, and my sis and I fought over who got to choose the angel. That was the year Dad ruled that our choices were not mutually exclusive - a new phrase for us. My brother who we only had for 15 years was the star over and over and over. Then the big year came when us sibs were the Wise Men, fancy robes showed up for us.
She'd tell us to keep thinking about that member of the Nativity scene once our choice was made. We were to keep thinking about the Nativity from their perspective and on Christmas Eve we'd talk about it. It was a wonderful thing to look forward to. We'd go around the family circle and share our thoughts.
This year, I think is my Anne year. Mary's mother, baby's grandmother. . .what was it like for her in those years when they had the big secret all to themselves?
Thank you Norah Lofts for taking me to those far off countries and times, and to my own far off country and time - both long gone except for the words with which we tell our stories, with the bright light of shared memories.
25|52:11b
Am annotating my read, with my notes of this year. . .vowing to re-read often now that we've found each other again.
While I do, the process of going through the different members of that great event, it reminds me of my mother's question to us every year at December dinners around our table. She would charge each one in our family, early in the season by asking us, "This Christmas who will you be? Of all the Nativity characters - however you see them - Who will YOU be? Through their eyes what will you see at the birth of Jesus? Will you be the donkey? Will you be the angel? Will you be Joseph this year? Will you be baby Jesus? Will you be the old barn owl? Will you be the mouse that sneaks in? Maybe you'll be the cow that gives some milk. Maybe you'll be the innkeeper's wife who sneaks back into the stable to help Mary. Maybe you'll be a Shepherd, or a Shepherd's son or a Shepherd's sheep. We'd make our stated choice for that particular year. I chose the donkey more than once, and my sis and I fought over who got to choose the angel. That was the year Dad ruled that our choices were not mutually exclusive - a new phrase for us. My brother who we only had for 15 years was the star over and over and over. Then the big year came when us sibs were the Wise Men, fancy robes showed up for us.
She'd tell us to keep thinking about that member of the Nativity scene once our choice was made. We were to keep thinking about the Nativity from their perspective and on Christmas Eve we'd talk about it. It was a wonderful thing to look forward to. We'd go around the family circle and share our thoughts.
This year, I think is my Anne year. Mary's mother, baby's grandmother. . .what was it like for her in those years when they had the big secret all to themselves?
Thank you Norah Lofts for taking me to those far off countries and times, and to my own far off country and time - both long gone except for the words with which we tell our stories, with the bright light of shared memories.
25|52:11b
January 26, 2026
‘How Far to Bethlehem?’ by Norah Lofts, published in 1965, is an absorbing speculation of the various persons featured in the Nativity legend - the parents and grandparents of the Christ Child, the Magi, the innkeeper who had no room at the inn, the Romans and Jews around Herod, and even Barabbas as a boy.
While avoiding metaphysical details of any kind, Lofts provides unique backstories of the people involved, some being bizarre, others merely sad, and still others, commonplace and believable. What more natural, for example, than that an old sailor, too old to go to sea, should marry a widow, struggling to manage her husband's tavern? And so at the time of the census, the town being so crowded, they had to turn away a young couple come a long way? The thief Barabbas, who learnt his trade from a bandit father, saw his father being killed when he attacked three pilgrims on the way to Jerusalem, and vowed revenge. Thirty three years later, he emerged from a prison a free man, while another victim was crucified in his place.
All the history and geography likely to have been known two thousand years ago are detailed in this book. Thus, a slave in Babylon may have met a Jew from Egypt, and heard a little from him about the Romans, although he himself might never see a legionary in his life. And so we go across the world in the company of sailors, slaves, concubines and astrologers, kings and bandits, shepherds and shopkeepers and innkeepers, Zealots and drunks, from Britain at one end to Korea at the other and all points between, always following that bright star.
However far-fetched the individual histories might be, the sheer imagination that could dream up such a logical connection from each person in the Bible story to every other one makes for compelling story- telling.
While avoiding metaphysical details of any kind, Lofts provides unique backstories of the people involved, some being bizarre, others merely sad, and still others, commonplace and believable. What more natural, for example, than that an old sailor, too old to go to sea, should marry a widow, struggling to manage her husband's tavern? And so at the time of the census, the town being so crowded, they had to turn away a young couple come a long way? The thief Barabbas, who learnt his trade from a bandit father, saw his father being killed when he attacked three pilgrims on the way to Jerusalem, and vowed revenge. Thirty three years later, he emerged from a prison a free man, while another victim was crucified in his place.
All the history and geography likely to have been known two thousand years ago are detailed in this book. Thus, a slave in Babylon may have met a Jew from Egypt, and heard a little from him about the Romans, although he himself might never see a legionary in his life. And so we go across the world in the company of sailors, slaves, concubines and astrologers, kings and bandits, shepherds and shopkeepers and innkeepers, Zealots and drunks, from Britain at one end to Korea at the other and all points between, always following that bright star.
However far-fetched the individual histories might be, the sheer imagination that could dream up such a logical connection from each person in the Bible story to every other one makes for compelling story- telling.
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