a christmas story

Christians are frightened of the real Christmas story � and it is never told," claims Charles Foster, the author of a new book, The Christmas Mystery.

Charles Foster is a barrister, author, part-time judge of the Crown Court, a tutor in Medical Ethics and Law at the University of Oxford, and a Visiting Fellow of Green College, Oxford. He is also a member of Holy Trinity Brompton.

"Evangelicals are frightened that their notion of how to read Scripture will be shattered, while Catholics are concerned that they will have to look with distressing care at the figure of Mary. We are all frightened of complexity, of having our comfortable preconceptions about God shattered and replaced by the real thing," he says in his book.

"We're frightened of having our precious childhood (and childish) notions of the Christmas message replaced with something more intellectually and emotionally arduous. So we take refuge in pastiche: we conflate Matthew, Luke and downright fairytale into a palatable mush. The result is an easy target for critics of Christianity," he challenges.

"How can we possibly defend the historicity of Christmas if the Christmas story we tell isn't remotely historical, and by our conflation we've shown that we're not actually concerned about historicity at all? The fall-out for other areas of apologetics is obvious."

Foster also believes that the birth accounts in Matthew and Luke's gospels explode some dearly held doctrines from both wings of the church.

"The notion of verbal inerrancy, as understood by large swathes of conservative evangelicals, meets its nemesis in the very first chapter of the very first book of the New Testament. Catholics will certainly be upset that I conclude, in the book, that the doctrines of the Immaculate Conception and Perpetual Virginity of Mary (but not the Virgin Birth, of course), have their roots in gnosticism, and were responses to early rumours of the illegitimacy of Jesus," he continues.

Despite all that, Foster says that studying the birth accounts in the gospels resulted, for him, in a breakthrough "into something far deeper, more fascinating, more colourful and more variegated than our dowdy grey ideas of the Incarnation".

He asks, "Did Christmas happen? Indeed it did: but we'll never convince anyone outside the Christian community of that if we're as dishonest and as cowardly in our handling of the sources as we generally are."


Aspiring 10-year-old actor Josiah Vasey of Red Bluff has had a couple of bit parts in children's theatre productions in town, but he's never had a leading role.

But that will change Friday night when he makes his debut as Ralphie in the BareStage Theatre presentation of the perennial holiday favorite, "A Christmas Story."

"I think it's kind of fun just acting out emotions and stuff," Vasey said during a recent rehearsal. "It's really cool."

Vasey is one of about a half-dozen local children who will be featured in BareStage's next production, an adaptation of a 1983 film about a boy's quest for a BB gun.

"There's been a lot of calls ... for more things for kids, and we had an opportunity to do that," said Bryon Burruss, BareStage's artistic director and the director of the play. "This show has a lot of roles for children. We thought it would be a good fit."

"A Christmas Story" depicts life in the Midwest in the 1940s. It centers around Ralphie Parker, who wants a genuine Red Ryder BB gun and pleads his case to his mother, his teacher and a department store Santa Claus.

The play will be performed on weekends through Dec. 22 in the intimate theater at 446 Antelope Blvd. No. 38 in Red Bluff. It will include all the elements from the film, including the family's temperamental exploding furnace, a school bully, the boys' experiment with a wet tongue on a cold lamppost and Ralphie's father winning a lamp shaped like a woman's leg.

BareStage originally had planned to do Christopher Durang's 2002 comedy "Mrs. Bob Cratchit's Wild Christmas Binge," a musical parody of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol." However, the Riverfront Playhouse in Redding is doing that play through Dec. 15.

BareStage's "A Christmas Story" will use a slightly larger cast than Burruss normally uses for the tiny theater. The trick is going to be depicting the play's roughly 20 different locations on the small stage, Burruss said.

The theater's youth movement suits the adult actors and parents just fine.

Jeff Holland, 39, of Corning, who works in surveillance at the Rolling Hills Casino, has been acting in BareStage productions for three years. His son, Cole, came to be in a play and he was cast as the boy's father, and he's been appearing in shows since.

"I'm a ham," Holland said. "I've always been the class clown, so I thought this was a great avenue for it."

Auditions were held Nov. 10 for children aged 8 to 15, and roles were available for five boys and two girls.

The story will provide wholesome entertainment for families during the holidays, Burruss said.

"It's one of the most beloved Christmas stories ever," he said. "It's a little different in that a lot of Christmas stories are heart-wrenching ... This one, you get to laugh from beginning to end