Back in 2005, “The Case for Christ” author and Christian apologist Lee Strobel published a book called “The Case for Christmas: A Journalist Investigates the Identity of the Child in the Manger.”

In September this year, 20 years after its original publication, Strobel released an updated version of his Christmas book to include the latest scholarship, research, archaeological findings, and scientific insights that have emerged since.

On this episode of “The Glenn Beck Program,” Glenn interviews Strobel about these fascinating new findings that change the way we read the Christmas story.

According to the most widely accepted narrative, Mary and Joseph came to Bethlehem for the census, arrived at an inn, but were turned away by the innkeeper for lack of space, forcing Mary to give birth to Jesus in a separate stable or barn among animals, where she laid him in a manger.

But Strobel says there’s one Greek word that changes this narrative entirely, and that word is “kataluma.”

In the ancient manuscripts of the gospel of Luke, “kataluma” is the word used to describe the place where Mary and Joseph were turned away, but it doesn’t mean inn, according to most scholars.

It actually translates to “guest room.”

A typical house in first-century Bethlehem, Strobel explains, had “one large room broken down into two parts.”

“The larger part was a living area — that’s where people would live, eat, sleep — and then there was a couple of steps down to a smaller area where the animals were brought at night,” he explains.

However, because animals were often seen as beloved pets, sometimes they were allowed to come up into the main living area. A manger (a feeding trough) was therefore a common item in both the upper and lower spaces of the house.

Wealthier families also had a “kataluma” — a guest room — in their homes, used for hosting traveling family and friends.

The original scriptures say that Mary and Joseph were turned away from the “kataluma” because it was occupied. This means that the couple likely didn’t seek shelter at an inn at all but rather at a relative’s home.

It makes sense that the “kataluma” would have been full at this time because of all the people traveling into Bethlehem for the census. Mary and Joseph, Strobel explains, were likely told by their relatives that they could just stay and birth the baby in the main living area.

“And yes, there is a manger there. And yes, some of the animals may have come up the stairs because of the commotion,” he says, reiterating that animals and mangers were common in a home’s main living space.

“There probably was no inn,” he concludes.

But an imprecise translation for “kataluma” isn’t the only evidence for this new narrative.

Strobel explains that Luke uses the word “kataluma” only one other time in the book, and it clearly refers to a separate room in a family home. But he uses a different word — “pandocheion” — to refer to a traditional inn in the parable of the Good Samaritan.

“If he wanted to use the word ‘inn,’ he would have used ‘pandocheion,’ but he didn’t. He used ‘kataluma,’” he says.

Further, “in first-century Jewish culture, the value of hospitality was so high that it would have been impossible for an innkeeper to turn away a pregnant Jewish woman,” Strobel tells Glenn.

“It would have destroyed his business. … And we don’t even know there were any inns in Bethlehem. It was a small town — 500 people. It wasn’t on a main crossroads. There may or may not have even been an inn there in the first place,” he adds.

The revelation that Jesus was most likely born in a home rather than in a dirty barn “changes everything,” Glenn says.

But there are even more details that the traditional Christmas story gets wrong about Jesus’ birth, according to Strobel.

According to the standard narrative, Mary is on the verge of giving birth when she and Joseph arrive in Bethlehem, but this urgency, Strobel says, comes from “a book of fiction that was written in 200 A.D.”

The scriptures only tell us “that while they were in Bethlehem, she gave birth. Doesn’t say they’re in Bethlehem five minutes or five days or five months,” he explains.

To hear more incredible revelations from Strobel’s investigations into the authentic Christmas story, watch the video above.

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​The glenn beck program, Glenn beck, Blazetv, Blaze media, Blaze podcasts, Lee strobel, Case for christ, Case for christmas, Christmas, Christmas story, Christianity, Mary and jesus 

The Democratic Party has been wandering the wilderness for years, somehow discovering new ways to alienate large portions of the country. And it still isn’t finished.

Rock bottom, it turns out, has a basement — and Texas has the keys.

Earlier this month, Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D), a congresswoman who treats every disagreement like a full-contact sport, announced her Senate bid. Waiting for her in March is state Rep. James Talarico (D), a former teacher and pastor-in-training with a very different style.

Neither is good news. But from a Christian perspective, one is far worse.

Crockett is impossible to miss. She’s volume without thought, performance without a functioning pause button. Trump derangement syndrome has long since replaced reason, and nuance never survived the encounter. She seems to measure success by how many people she can irritate before lunch. Her politics are blunt, her tone brittle, her intellectual range roughly comparable to a Roomba. You always know where she stands because she’s standing on the table, yelling.

Talarico, by contrast, operates on an entirely different frequency. He lowers his voice, quotes scripture, and speaks with the gentle cadence of a youth pastor wrapping up a weekend retreat just before the acoustic guitar comes out. He talks about compassion, dignity, and the moral duty to protect the vulnerable. He wants to heal divides, soothe tensions, and “bring people together.”

If Crockett feels like a bar fight, Talarico feels like “Kumbaya” by candlelight with everyone instructed to hold hands.

And that is precisely the problem.

Crockett’s politics are abrasive but obvious. She makes no effort to hide what she believes or where she wants to take the country. There is something almost refreshing about her lack of disguise. You may not like the message, but it’s unmistakable. She offends openly and moves on.

But Talarico offends in a very different manner. He has mastered the art of wrapping progressive politics in pastoral language. What he offers is standard Democratic doctrine: sexual ideology backed by law, borders treated as optional, and a growing state taking over matters once settled by family, church, and conscience.

RELATED: ‘Progressive Christian’ turns Bible into a Planned Parenthood parable — but truth fires back

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Talarico insists that faith and today’s Democratic Party can walk hand in hand. Perhaps this was plausible once, back when Democrats still shared a basic moral grammar with the rest of the country. In the 1990s, disagreement existed, but reality was still shared. Marriage meant something fixed. Biological sex wasn’t up for debate. Free speech had limits, but truth still mattered. You could argue policy without arguing over whether biology or basic reality still mattered.

That world is gone.

The modern Democratic project is built on ideas fundamentally at odds with Christian teaching: the self treated as sovereign, identity treated as sacred, desire elevated to authority, and socialism presented as the only workable future.

Sin is renamed “harm.” Redemption is replaced with affirmation. Judgment is reserved only for those who dissent. Christianity, meanwhile, insists on restraint, repentance, and allegiance to something beyond the individual.

Talarico tries to solve this puzzle by watering down Christianity until it feels more like a mood than a creed. He does this because he has no other choice. In today’s Democratic Party, a Christian who speaks plainly about restraint and repentance simply cannot survive. He is summoned, sidelined, and eventually expelled. To remain welcome, faith must be dumbed down and rendered harmless.

So Talarico treats Christianity like a buffet. He keeps the language of love and mercy, the parts that flatter modern sensibilities, and quietly discards the parts that demand obedience, self-denial, or radical honesty.

This is not faith guiding politics but politics reshaping faith.

And that is where the charge sticks. This is not a good-faith disagreement or a sincere wrestling with belief but a distortion carried out for political survival. If Talarico spoke the full truth of Christianity as it has been taught for centuries, he would be politically homeless by morning. Rather than risk that, he trims the gospel until it fits the party line.

This is where the real danger lies. He speaks like a shepherd but votes like an activist, borrowing Christianity’s authority to push policies that weaken what faith seeks to strengthen — specifically the nuclear family and ordered community.

Crockett does her damage loudly, like a bull in a china shop. Talarico, on the other hand, is more woodworm than wrecking ball, smiling as he eats through the beams.

There’s something faintly comic about watching Democrats embrace Talarico. This is a party that spent decades treating Christianity like a vestigial organ, now swooning over a Sunday-school version of Pete Buttigieg.

But there’s nothing funny about what the Texan stands for.

Talarico offers a faith that never says “no,” never draws lines, and never makes anyone uncomfortable except those stubborn enough to insist that limits must be imposed. Love is endlessly elastic. Compassion is permanently undefined. Everything bends; nothing breaks — except, eventually, the foundation.

Crockett, for all her theatrics, doesn’t pretend to share a Christian worldview. Talarico does. He doesn’t attack Christian beliefs outright. Instead he sands them down, slowly, patiently, until they no longer support much of anything.

For Texans, come March, both options are bad. This isn’t a choice so much as a coordinated assault: one, a knee to the groin, the other, a roundhouse to the ribs. Crockett does her damage loudly, like a bull in a china shop. Talarico, on the other hand, is more woodworm than wrecking ball, smiling as he eats through the beams.

Neither deserves trust. But only one dresses his agenda in sacred language.

Texas Democrats may think they are choosing between bedlam and bland reassurance. Christians should recognize the choice for what it is: between open hostility and sneaky subversion, between a politics that attacks faith from the outside and one that reshapes it from within.

Both are bad. But only one pretends to be good. And that, from a Christian point of view, makes all the difference.

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I recently did something that I usually avoid. I stayed up too late and wandered into the digital sewer we politely call “the conversation.” X, feeds, clips, comments, rage-bait. I knew it would not end well, but I kept scrolling anyway. By the time I finally shut it off, it was clear that the despair and resentment social media produces are not a bug — they are the feature.

The world you see online is a world stripped of context and proportion. Everything is framed as an emergency, everything demands outrage, nothing asks for wisdom. Human suffering is turned into ammunition, children are turned into slogans, and hatred is dressed up as moral clarity. If you sit with it long enough, you begin to feel foolish for believing in decency at all.

God is not dead. He is not asleep. And the story is not finished, no matter how much the algorithm wants you to believe otherwise.

It made me think of a poem I had not thought about for some time.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “Christmas Bells” is often quoted for its opening lines about peace on earth and goodwill toward men. That is usually where people stop.

But Longfellow wrote the poem in the middle of the Civil War. His country was fractured, his own son a casualty of the fighting, and his wife killed in a tragic accident. The poem is an honest look into the mind of a man laid low.

In the early stanzas, Longfellow describes hearing church bells repeat the old promise of peace. Then reality intrudes, cannons thunder, violence drowns out the song. He writes that it felt “as if an earthquake rent the hearthstones of a continent.” That is what civil war feels like from the inside.

That line has stayed with me for a very long time.

We are not there yet, but the pressure is mounting. Anti-Semitism has returned openly, not whispered, but justified. The Jewish people — history’s most reliable early warning system — are being threatened again, and too many voices respond with silence, excuses, or applause. We swore we would never allow this again. Now it is happening all over the West.

At the same time, the world is edging toward wider conflict. Alliances are hardening, borders matter again. But this time, there is no obvious force capable of stabilizing the chaos. America is busy devouring itself. Europe is exhausted. The rest of the world is watching to see what happens next.

This is the part of the poem most people skip.

Longfellow does not rush to hope. He admits his despair. “There is no peace on earth,” he writes, “for hate is strong, and mocks the song.” Honesty is not weakness. Pretending everything is fine when it is not is how civilizations collapse quietly.

But the poem does not end there.

The final stanza matters because it follows despair instead of denying it. Longfellow writes:

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men.”

That is not cheap optimism promising a quick end to suffering. It is a conviction insisting that evil does not get the last word.

That distinction matters a lot right now.

RELATED: Culture’s great subversion machine has broken down at last

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Hope is not pretending the algorithm is wrong. It is recognizing that what trends is rarely what endures. The quiet courage that holds families together, the decency that stops violence when no camera is present, the faith that steadies people when institutions fail — those things do not go viral, but they do prevail. History does not turn on outrage. It turns on character.

Every civilization that survives a moment like this does so because enough people refuse to surrender their moral bearings. They do not deny the danger or excuse the evil. They do not outsource conscience to crowds or machines. They decide, quietly and stubbornly, to let their lives reflect the fact that truth still matters.

Longfellow had not yet seen the end of the war when he wrote that poem. He wrote it because despair was real and hope was necessary anyway. The bells did not silence the cannons overnight. But they reminded him — and us — that order is not an illusion and truth is not negotiable.

God is not dead. He is not asleep. And the story is not finished, no matter how much the algorithm wants you to believe otherwise.

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A Christmas or two ago, we arrived in Denver just after Thanksgiving for my wife’s long-awaited surgery — one of a series of complex procedures that could only be done at the teaching hospital there. The hospital was already dressed for the season, garlands hung and trees lit, but I barely noticed. All I could see was the next hurdle in a long medical journey.

After eight days in the ICU, Gracie was transferred to the neuro floor. I wanted her to feel something of Christmas, so I slipped out to a store and returned with a small tree, poinsettias, battery candles for the window, and stockings I hung by the nurses’ message board. A friend loaned me a keyboard, which I tucked into the corner. Music has steadied us through many storms, and I hoped it would do so again.

Christmas felt sharper there. Simpler. More honest. When life strips away what doesn’t matter, what does matter finally comes into view.

When the nurses wheeled her into that room, she entered a tiny Christmas world carved out of tile and fluorescent light. The cinnamon-scented broom was no match for the Montana pines behind our home, but it still brought a smile.

Gracie sometimes sang from her hospital bed as I played familiar carols. You’ll be relieved to know that when a staffer requested Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas,” I politely declined and stayed with the classics. Her song gets ample airplay as it is.

Learning the language of hospital life

I have been a caregiver for a long time. We have spent nearly every major holiday in a hospital, along with most minor ones — birthdays, anniversaries, and the days in between.

Hospitals, however harsh, have become familiar enough that they no longer disorient me. In the last three years alone, we spent nearly 11 months in that same Denver hospital over three difficult stretches. Over the decades, Gracie has been inpatient in 13 different hospitals. After that many years, you learn the rhythms, the noises, the hush, and the hidden grief of those hallways.

At night, before crossing the street to the extended-stay hotel where I lived during that long stretch, I often stopped at the grand piano in the massive lobby and played Christmas hymns. Patients and their families drifted nearby or stood quietly along the balcony with IV poles and wheelchairs. Their faces carried the loneliness, fear, and disbelief that appear when life tilts without warning. When I played “Silent Night,” you could see the change. Shoulders dropped. Eyes softened. A few wiped away tears.

We lived in Nashville for 35 years before moving to Montana, and the only time I felt a lump in my throat at that piano was when I played “Tennessee Christmas.” When I reached the line about Denver snow falling, it hit me harder than I expected. Being far from home — and yet exactly where we needed to be — settled heavily on me in that moment.

Spending Christmas Eve in a hospital is unlike any other day. For a few minutes that night, the music gave all of us a place to breathe. While I’ve grown somewhat used to that world, I could tell my impromptu audience had not. So I played for them.

Not home, but holy

Our youngest son flew in, and a close friend joined us for Christmas Eve. In that small room upstairs, we shared meals, prayed, and laughed through the kind of tears that form when joy and exhaustion sit side by side. It was not home, but it was holy.

On Christmas morning, we filled stockings, opened gifts, and played more music. To our surprise, that hospital Christmas became one of the most meaningful we’ve ever known. We have enjoyed plenty of postcard holidays in the Montana Rockies, with snowy woods and trees cut from behind our cabin. Yet none of those scenes compared to the quiet radiance of that hospital room.

RELATED: What we lose when we rush past pain

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Christmas felt sharper there. Simpler. More honest. When life strips away what doesn’t matter, what does matter finally comes into view.

God stepped into a harsh world, not a perfect one. The first Christmas came in conditions far cruder than ours, yet Heaven filled that stable. That is the story we remember every year: Emmanuel — God with us.

I thought of that as I looked up from the piano in the lobby, seeing the sadness on the faces around me and those watching from above. It brought to mind the crowds Jesus saw when Scripture says He was “moved with compassion” for the afflicted. Unlike me, He did not merely observe sorrow. He stepped into it. He came to bear it, redeem it, and ultimately remove it.

The light that still shines

That night reminded me that the holiness of Christmas is not found in perfect scenes but in God drawing near to people who are hurting. Being in a hospital on Christmas Eve was a fitting picture of how needy we truly are — and how miraculous it is that Christ entered our sorrow, suffering, and loneliness. Emmanuel means God with us, not in theory, but in the raw places where we feel most alone.

I left Denver with a truth I needed to keep close: Joy does not depend on scenery. Any place can become a sanctuary when Christ is worshipped — even a hospital room where monitors beep and nurses whisper through the night.

If you’re facing a season you never would have chosen, may this Christmas meet you with that same comfort. The promise of Emmanuel — God with us — has not changed.

“Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting light; the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight,” Phillips Brooks wrote in 1868, steadying his people with the truth that Christ walks into dark streets as readily as bright ones.

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