The Christmas Story isn't about saying, "this is what happened", but "imagine if this happened".
Imagine a young woman gets pregnant after receiving a message from another dimension.
The message says that her Child will be a long-promised avatar, the progeny of two realities.
(Let's call the realities, 'Heaven' and 'Earth'.)
(Let's call the realities, 'Heaven' and 'Earth'.)
She will be the Child's Mother, but he won't have a human father.
In nine months' time, the Baby is born and messengers from Heaven appear in a flash of light to announce his arrival.
The flash of light and the announcement is witnessed by a bunch of off-duty shift workers, who think they've had a shared hallucination, due to lack of sleep.
Against reason, they follow the instructions in the messengers' announcement to the spot where the Mother and adopted father - and an assemblage of domesticated animals - watch over the Child in rapt adoration.
Later, three philosopher kings - a trio of esteemed scientists, artists and statesmen - unexpectedly arrive, having followed an unusually luminous star to the site of the birth.
They examine the Child physically and metaphysically, and verify that he is precisely what the messengers claimed he would be - a timeless being incarnated inside a mortal body, sent to enlighten those who have ears to hear and eyes to see.
So persuaded, the philosopher kings offer the Child tributes fit for a monarch.
And in that moment, the Child's Mother realizes something.
She realizes that the only gift that will ever really matter to her, or to humankind, had been given just a little while earlier, on that night when the Child was born.
Why wouldn't we all want to imagine that might have happened, at least once a year?
On Earth, peace and goodwill towards all. For the Istari Report, Merry Christmas.
