I used to love how the carol “Silent Night” captured my image of the season: peaceful, expectant, hopeful. Then I became an adult, and a parent, and Christmastime became anything but serene. I found myself singing words like “all is calm, all is bright” while looking around at other faces, wondering, “Does anyone else believe this nonsense?” When God saw fit to give me my own swaddled baby boy–then another–I related to Mary more than ever and felt that someone must speak up for her, because if I know anything about Christmas with a newborn (and I do; my kids were two weeks and two months old, respectively, at their first Christmases), it is anything but calm and bright and heavenly peace is a vanishing vapor. So allow me to speak for the mothers (and Marys) of the world when I call BS on “Silent Night.”

Read the rest over at Mockingbird!