The First Christmas: A Story of New Beginnings

by Stephen Mitchell

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

Delight in this retelling of the Nativity story you think you know. Stephen Mitchell beautifully weaves the narratives of all the participants so we can view this beloved story with new and awe-filled eyes.

“I love The First Christmas. What a charming way Stephen Mitchell has found to tell my favorite story of all, the Nativity, character by character (I love the donkey and the ox), with wise and thrilling interludes about God, reality, truth.” –Anne Lamott


In The First Christmas, Stephen Mitchell brings the Nativity story to vivid life as never before. A narrative that is only sketched out in two Gospels becomes fully realized here with nuanced characters and a setting that reflects the culture of the time. Mitchell has suffused the birth of Jesus with a sense of beauty that will delight and astonish readers.

In this version, we see the world through the eyes of a Whitmanesque ox and a visionary donkey, starry-eyed shepherds and Zen-like wise men, each of them providing a unique perspective on a scene that is, in Western culture, the central symbol for good tidings of great joy. Rather than superimposing later Christian concepts onto the Annunciation and Nativity scenes, he imagines Mary and Joseph experiencing the angelic message as a young Jewish woman and man living in the year 4 bce might have experienced it, with terror, dismay, and ultimate acceptance. In this context, their yes becomes an act of great moral courage.

Readers of every background will be enchanted by this startlingly beautiful reimagining of the Christmas tale.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250790699
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	11/09/2021
Pages:	224
Sales rank:	102,669
Product dimensions:	7.60(w) x 4.80(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Stephen Mitchell was born in Brooklyn, educated at Amherst, the Sorbonne, and Yale, and de-educated through intensive Zen training. His many books include the bestselling Tao Te Ching, Gilgamesh, The Gospel According to Jesus, The Book of Job, The Second Book of the Tao, The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, Bhagavad Gita, The Iliad, The Odyssey, Beowulf, and The Way of Forgiveness. He is also the co-author of three of his wife Byron Katie’s bestselling books.

Editorial Reviews

“I love The First Christmas. What a charming way Stephen Mitchell has found to tell my favorite story of all,
the Nativity, character by character (I love the donkey and the ox), with wise and thrilling interludes about
God, reality, truth.” –Anne Lamott

“The First Christmas is a wonderful book, tender and rich with bursts of humor, filled with curious contrivances and surprises. Reading it felt like opening a brightly-wrapped Christmas present and finding a second box (also brightly wrapped) inside, and inside that box a third, and then another, and another, and another. Until, at the very center, in a tiny box, there is a diamond: the wisdom contained within this telling.” –Elizabeth Gilbert

“Stephen Mitchell’s The First Christmas is a wholly original and deeply inspired book. I’m swept away by his language: simple and concrete, fetching. Mitchell grants us access here to the kingdom of heaven that lies within us, folded in a simple story.” – Jay Parini, author of Jesus: The Human Face of God

"As he has done before to our enlightenment and delight, Stephen Mitchell takes an ancient text and opens it and illuminates it for our time. And now, the nativity story! Who knew there were so many perspectives from ox to innkeeper, shepherds to seekers, to Mitchell himself—all helping us see this seminal event in heartwarming, eye-opening complexity and compassion. As is often said about an important and riveting and life-changing event: you had to be there. In The First Christmas, Mitchell puts us there, and the bird and rebirth happen in the reader as well—no matter how well we know the story. Mitchell's illumined text is a star that leads us to a new understanding of the Bethlehem moments in our lives."
—Julia Alvarez, Author of How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents and In the Time of the Butterflies

From the Publisher

10/15/2021

This unique adaptation/retelling of the Nativity blends established religious narratives, fictionalized viewpoints of known figures, and an omniscient storyteller who occasionally drops into the chapters to add observations but is also the voice of the Interludes, those sections between chapters that encourage deeper reflection on the tale being told. In the foreword, Mitchell (translator and adaptor of religious and philosophical texts, including Tao Te Ching and Gilgamesh) says that this Nativity story is meant to be inclusive of Jewish, Muslim, Christian, and secular readers; inspirational quotes from a variety of sources open the chapters. He keeps a consistent tone through all the different sections, making it easy for readers to stay engaged even as they switch between styles. VERDICT Readers don't need a religious background to be entertained and educated by this account of the first Christmas.—Stacey Hayman, Rocky River P.L., OH

Library Journal