Every year, the story is retold. The story of a family...a man and his wife and their first baby son. There is no title to this story, and it wasn't even written down until many years after it happened, though it had been prophesied for generations, and became the greatest story in the world...the story of Mary, Joseph, Jesus and Bethlehem.

Each Christmas we remember the words of the shepherds, when after the singing angels had gone away from them into heaven, said one to another.."Let us now go, even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which has come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us!"

So must we, in our thoughts, go even unto Bethlehem.
There's a song in the air!
There's a star in the sky
There's a mother's deep prayer
And a baby's low cry.
And the star rains its fire while the beautiful sang,
For the manger of Bethlehem cradles a King.

How we love the Christmas story! What beautiful memories I have of Christmases past. Memories of nervous children crowded onto bare board stages, with a tinfoil star hanging from a string over a cardboard stable crowded with cardboard animals. A little girl dressed in white and blue carefully holding a little tightly wrapped doll. Beside her stands a boy with a towel turban, wearing his brother's bathrobe. Little kid angels wearing tinsel halos. Children telling the greatest story in the world.

One of my Christmas memories was different from regular Christmases. I was serving a mission in Scotland, 8,000 miles from home where my family and my heart were that night. My companion and I had been driven by other Sister missionaries to attend a Christmas Eve program in a small branch outside of our usual area. My Christmas package hadn't yet arrived from home. We were meeting in a rather, bare rented hall with members whom we didn't know. I had left to go our to the car to get something, and was standing next to an old, arched stone bridge over a stream. I stopped and was overwhelmed with homesickness. When I had been at home, I had picked out a certain star I could see at night above our home. It was small, but rather a faint greenish color. I looked up at the sky thinking that if I could find it, it also would be shining above my far away home. I searched for it, and finally found it...my star.

And while I stood there all alone in the dark night,so far away from all that was familiar to me of the Christmas Eves I had loved, a feeling came to me that drove away my homesickness. I thought of that other star, when others watched the heavens for it, and knew, as I still know, that the Savior is the King of the world, and came to bring redemption to the world and to save it from sin. Presents and trees and comforts are nice, but they are not Christmas. So this Christmas, may all our thoughts go even unto Bethlehem to see this thing which has come to pass which the Lord hath made known unto us.