In the Catholic church I go to some Sundays, we say “Hail Mary full of Grace…” but I doubt if there was much grace to be found, bouncing on a donkey down a dusty, rocky road with your fiancé on your way to a town you may not have been to for a census that you probably don’t want to take part in. There is very little grace in the ninth month of pregnancy, with your ribs crushed, pelvis aching, limbs swollen and we all know that the ninth-month pregnant waddle is the antithesis of graceful.
Mary, on her way to Bethlehem is without her mother, sister, or best friend. She is traveling away from the village midwife and healing woman she’s known her whole life. She would know that this baby is coming any day, she would know she was going to give birth away from those she trusted and those who cared for her. In a culture where birth was a rite of passage to be walked through surrounded by those sister-friends closest to you, it must have been terrifying to travel further and further from this circle, knowing that you would labour and birth away from those you loved.

We see these pictures of Mary on cards, all glowing and pristine. We see her kneeling, fully dressed and prim and proper with a beautiful baby Jesus. I can’t reconcile these gilded images with what I know about birth. I’m a doula – I have been with women when they birth and I study birth and
I have never, ever seen a woman look like this after giving birth.
Birthing is hard work. It is sweaty and loud and intense and physical. Birthing women sway and groan and chant and sing. Birthing women clutch their support people and puke and cry and laugh and shake. Birthing women sweat and sweat and sweat. Birthing is hard work.
I see Mary with her baby – a baby that is a little bloody, covered in vernix and has a cone head from being squeezed down – dare I say – her vagina - and he is screaming and hungry. And Mary, suddenly becoming a mother, has instincts that kick in and she gets naked and she puts him to her breast and she cries out “Oh! My baby! My baby! Look at my baby! Oh hello baby!” Her eyes glow and she is triumphant. She wears a halo of victory.
Someone paint me that picture.
That’s a Christmas card I could send out with conviction.
But even that picture isn’t enough. That picture isn’t the whole picture, that picture is still missing something.
Every Sunday School Christmas Pageant shows us Joseph, desperately trying to find a room in the inn. Certainly, this must have been a stressful situation for him. But once Mary got into active labour and Joseph heard his fiancé get into her labour groove, once he heard her start to vocalize with her labour pains and sway her hips, and close her eyes and go rock and moan - quite simply,
Joseph would have shit his pants carpenter pants and went and found a woman. Guys didn’t do birth back then. There were no couple’s prenatal classes, no Bradley Method of Husband-Coached Childbirth. Birth was women’s work. Men waited outside.
If Joseph was desperate to find a room in an inn – imagine his panicked desperation to find a midwife to care for his labouring woman. I am just as sure that Mary did not peacefully lie in the straw without breaking a sweat during labour as I am that Joseph did not calmly deliver a baby by himself.
So, where are the midwives in the holiday card pictures?As I mentioned, I visit a Catholic church and every Sunday, we say:
Hail Mary,
Full of Grace,
The Lord is with thee.
The word “midwife” simply means “With Woman”. Although it has medical connotations today, its meaning is not strictly medical. With Woman. It means I am here with you as you journey through the most challenging and triumphant event of your life. I won’t leave you alone. I will support you and encourage you and care for you and protect you. I am with you.
Hail Mary,
Full of Grace,
The Lord is with thee.
There were women who were with Mary. God’s presence, working through the hands of women. Grace in the labour space, God’s presence in the labour room. Midwives with Mary in her moment of triumph.
Hail Mary,
Full of Grace,
The Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou among women,
and blessed is the fruit
of thy womb, Jesus.
Christmas is a celebration of the birth of Jesus - but the actual birth gets overlooked. We say “blessed is the fruit of thy womb” but
we don’t think about the womb.
When I celebrate the Christmas season, I think about the birth, I think about the womb. I think about the physicality and the power of birth. I think about the power of the midwives, bringing God’s grace into the stable. I think of the triumph of the woman Mary, bringing her baby into the world.
There is victory in every birth – but what incredible victory Mary would have felt; knowing that she just birthed the Son of God. As I contemplate the humility of Jesus, God’s son, coming to us in the form of a baby, I am awed and amazed by the miraculous power of birth.
A woman birthed Jesus. Messily, physically, intensely birthed.
It is this realness of the birth that enriches my connection with the realness of Jesus. It is the knowledge that the God that I love did what we all do – he was born. I love that in order for Him to come to us – He had to do so by way of a womb, by way of a woman. He did not come in a cloud, or on a boat, or just flash sterilely into existence on the planet. He was real. As I am real, as you are real. As you and I were born, he was born.
Sometimes, I feel that my faith becomes disconnected from reality. It seems complicated and ethereal. But when I picture Mary, triumphant after birth, with her son in a manger, I also see, as the old song says “a cradle in the shadow of a cross”. With this picture, my faith crystallizes – hard and solidly unshakable.
I remember that His birth was real and raw and moving because life is real and raw and moving. With an understanding of the realness of His birth I am aware of the realness of His death, the realness of His sacrifice and the realness of His love for me. His sacrifice and His love have transformed my life. They have given me purpose and peace – and that is what Christmas is truly about – the love and sacrifice of a man who was born to us.
For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given,
and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
~ Isaiah 9:6