Some stories are so well known that we miss the meaning. We know who the characters are so we don't think about what it means to have these people at the centre in this particular setting.

The story of Jesus' birth is like this. In homes and churches, the same small figures are set out. There will be a couple animals, because the birth took place in a stable. There will be shepherds and sheep, because the news was given to a group out in the pasture before anyone else. And there will be three foreigners because of the ones who saw the star and travelled to find the child.

The stable in these crèches will be clean and tidy, not like most barns I've been in. There will not be an inn in the background, even though one of the stories claims that the reason he was born in an animal shelter is that his mother, clearly in labour, was turned away from the regular guest housing.

A few years ago, a church in Montreal placed the figures in a tent with "UNHCR" printed on it. This helped to ground the story in our understanding: the family were far from home at the time the child was born. And, one of the stories says that after the birth, the family became refugees, chased from their home by the king. Like Syrian refugees in Jordan and Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, the power of government was used to displace them.

The pictures in songs and on cards of three kings bowing to a child who never cries mis-represents the written story. Something shifts when we see the story of a hungry crying child displaced from their community by the political powers of the day.

Those who wrote of Jesus' birth wanted to help people see that God was not acting through the existing power structures but through people on the margins, outsiders.

In case the people who hear the story don't get it from the location of the birth, the writer Luke added nomadic farmers. The first announcement is given to shepherds who pasture their flocks in the wilderness. In that dry land, shepherds kept their flocks outside the villages, in the wild, on the hillsides. They were outsiders who did not fit the patterns of life in the towns and cities.

To make sure that people understand this, the story by Matthew gives us foreigners as the ones who heed the news. Students of the stars, wise men, not kings, travel a great distance to see for themselves what God is up to.

And in both stories, an un-wed mother takes centre stage. Because Joseph is there at the birth--the crèche will have a man beside Mary--we may forget that when her pregnancy is discovered, he planned to dump her. It took some convincing for him to stick by her. It was Mary who could not walk away, who had to bear this gift and burden.

Pictures of Madonna and child do show the tender love of mother for baby, but do not picture the fear she must have felt when she faced her family and Joseph. The images do not show the agony of labour. The dependence of the child is sometimes shown, though some images show an infant who looks like they could manage on their own. We never see the kicking and screaming of a hungry baby with pain in their stomach.

There are images of an adult Jesus laughing. There are images of an angry man as well as a compassionate one. But in the birth narratives we sing and see, the images are quite unrealistic. Which is a shame because the original stories were told to show God coming in human form on the edge of society, vulnerable and marginalized. Something shifts when God in human form is a vulnerable baby and a refugee.

Cathy Hird lives on the shore of Georgian Bay.