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It's Christmas time, and this morning's sermon at church got me thinking: the Virgin Mary is a lot bigger of a deal than Joseph. In fact, I would go so far as to say, the nativity scene is "baby Jesus, Mary, the shepherds, wisemen, oh and that other guy, Mary's husband, whatshisname".

Joseph is pretty scarce - even in the Bible (I mean the only gospel that deals with him is Matthew), and while Mary gets various scene between Christmas and Easter, poor Joe only gets a handful in Matthew, and it's generally assumed that his scarcity after the incident with Jesus with the Temple Doctors, that he was dead by the time Jesus started His ministry.

Now, I can see the problems with upping St. Joseph's stage presence. Jesus is the Son of God - according to the Bible - so giving his earthly father a speaking part would probably raise a whole bunch of questions. But Matthew explicitly states that Joseph was righteous man, and that he did not wish to publicly disgrace Mary; not only that, but he takes her (pregnant with another man's child though she may be) and marries her, then gives the child his name (because in various passages in the Gospels Jesus is referred to as 'the son of the Carpenter/the son of Joseph' (in the original Greek as well as the translations)) and teaches Him his trade (Jesus most likely worked as a carpenter between the Temple incident and the start of His ministry), which, for the most part, is way above and beyond what Joseph would've been expected to do for a kid that's not even his.

Ergo, my Christmas challenge to you guys. My dad was raised by his father alone (my grandmother divorced him to shack up with her second husband that she had another four kids by). Can we give Joe some love? Or is it impossible without distorting the Christian message?
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