Summary: The “Actually” Podcast Conspiracies of Christmas: What “Actually” Happened : Was Zacharias ActuallyVisited By An Angel? Was Mary Actuallya Virgin Visited By An Angel? Was Jesus ActuallyBorn in a Barn in Bethlehem? Did Angels ActuallyAppear to the Shepherds? Did Wiseman ActuallyVisit the Christ Child? Did Mary and Joseph ActuallyFlee to Egypt? (Or did they Actuallygo back to Nazareth?)
Style: Drama. Duration: 12-15min
Actors: 5m, 1F, 1M/F
Characters
HOST, BO DEBUNK,
MARY & JOSEPH,
ZACHARIAH,
INNKEEPER (M/F),
SHEPHERD,
BALTHAZAR
Script
(Titles up on video screen)
(Host Bo DeBunk and his guests are seated around a table each with their own mic. Theme music plays)
DEBUNK: Hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of the “Actually” Podcast. I’m your host Bo DeBunk and today’s episode is “Conspiracies of Christmas: What Actually Happened?” And who better to set the record straight, than our guests Mary and Joseph, who were eyewitnesses of every part of the story. Welcome to the show.
MARY: Thanks for having us.
JOSEPH: Yeah, it’s good to be here.
DEBUNK: Now I have to admit, the story of the birth of your baby is incredible. Visits of angels, or were they aliens? Miracles or mental illness? Prophecies or paranoia? We’ll start with Zachariah, husband of your cousin Elizabeth, Mary. in fact, I invited him to come and tell his story. (Zachariah enters and sits at the end of the table, opposite DeBunk.)
ZECHARIAH: I was a priest performing my duties in the temple when the angel Gabriel appeared to me, saying that my wife Elizabeth was going to have a baby boy who would go before the Messiah, introducing him to the world. I was skeptical because Elizabeth was well beyond child-bearing age. The angel told me that I would not be able to talk till the baby was born, as a sign. Of course, everyone thought I’d had a stroke, but then little Johnny was born, and I regained my speech. So everyone knew I had been telling the truth.
DEBUNK: Thank you Zachariah. (He exits) Then you had your own encounter with the angel Gabriel, Mary.
MARY: Yes, Gabriel appeared to me and told me I would have a baby boy, conceived by God’s Holy Spirit, who would one day be the Messiah. Joseph and I were betrothed to be married, so we had not slept together, so he thought I must have slept with someone else.
JOSEPH: I thought I was going to have to divorce her but then I had my own encounter with an angel who told me Mary really had conceived by the Holy Spirit, so it was okay to take her as my wife.
DEBUNK: So you two knew you hadn’t slept together but what did everyone else think?
MARY: No one believed us. It was awful.
JOSEPH: People thought we were making it up, or that we were hallucinating. I remember thinking “Why us, Lord?”
MARY: But I realized right from the start that God had entrusted us with a baby that was so special.
JOSEPH: I mean, every baby is special. But Jesus … the Messiah?! (shakes head)
DEBUNK: Okay, so we have three people who were visited by an angel and I have to admit, as unbelievable as your story is, it’s all connected. I can’t debunk this out of hand. For the time being, the jury is out. So tell us about your trip to Bethlehem, to register for Caesar’s census.
MARY: What an ordeal! It took us a whole week to travel down those bumpy roads, and I was getting close to my time to give birth.
JOSEPH: And when we got there, we found no place to stay.
DEBUNK: I’ve invited another guest. See if you recognize him. (Innkeeper enters & sits down)
MARY: Of course! You’re the innkeeper who let us stay in your stable.
INNKEEPER: That’s me! What do you want to know?
DEBUNK: Well, there are a lot of people out there who think this part of the story is highly unlikely. That a baby who is born to be King would start offin such humble circumstances. Was the baby actually born in a barn?
INNKEEPER: Look, Mary was visibly … VERY pregnant when they came to the inn. And then later in the evening, I went out to see how they were doing, and there was the baby, lying in the feed trough. As to being born to be King, I wouldn’t know about that. Except…
DEBUNK: Except what?
INNKEEPER: Except what happened next! I think I’ll let your next guest tell you all about it. (Innkeeper exits and Shepherd sits down at the table)
JOSEPH: Sorry, do we know you?
SHEPHERD: I was one of the shepherds who was there that night. (Others nod their heads, murmur their recognition, etc.) It was the most amazing thing I had ever seen in my life! We shepherds were outside town watching our sheep, when an angel appeared out of nowhere. He was telling us about a Saviour who had been born in a barn in Bethlehem, and then the sky was absolutely filled with angels praising God. After the angels had gone away, we asked each other “Did you see what I saw?” and everyone had seen the same thing. When we went into town, we found the baby in a barn just as the angel had said. We told everyone we met. Some believed us, some thought we were nuts! But we know what we experienced and no one will ever be able to disprove what we saw.
DEBUNK: Thank you for that! (Shepherd exits) More angels! As much as I am naturally skeptical of these visions, I can’t debunk them. All the people I’ve talked to on this podcast are of a sound mind, who have shared their stories at the risk of being misunderstood. They don’t appear to have ulterior motives and weren’t seeking these experiences. And we’re not done yet! The last guest was not able to join us in person due to the distances involved, so here is a prerecorded interview I did before the show. (Next segment on video)
DEBUNK: I’d like to introduce a distinguished guest, who is an astrologer in the king’s court in Babylon. Balthazar, welcome to the show.
BALTHAZAR: Thank you for inviting me.
DEBUNK: Tell us your story!
BALTHAZAR: As an astrologer, I and my colleagues view the skies every night, and sometime ago, we saw signs pointing to a heavenly king that was to be born in Israel. Knowing this could be a once in a lifetime event, we decided to travel to Jerusalem to pay our repects to the newborn king. When we arrived, we met with King Herod, and found out to both our surprises that he was unaware of a baby being born. His scribes deduced that if the baby were the Messiah, it would be born in Bethlehem. They sent us on our way, Herod instructing us to let him know where the baby was so he could go and worship the Christ child. And we found the baby in a house with his parents Mary and Joseph, and we presented the baby with gifts and kneeled down and worshipped him. Something we had never done to the royal babies born in Babylon.
DEBUNK: And then…what about the angel?
BALTHAZAR: Yes, that night we were warned by an angel in a dream NOT to go back to Herod, who wanted to kill the baby that he saw as a threat to himself. So we went back to Babylon by a different route.
DEBUNK: I appreciate you taking the time to tell your story. Thank you!
BALTHAZAR: It has been my privilege to tell everyone I meet about that amazing journey and how God revealed himself to us as well. (End of video)
DEBUNK: Taken individually, each story about visits from angels would arouse my suspicions about the mental health of the person involved. But taken together…it strengthens the case. Joseph, tell us about your last two encounters with an angel.
JOSEPH: Well, yes, after Balthazar and the other wise men had left, I too was visited by an angel in a dream, who told me to take Mary and the baby to Egypt, because Herod would want to find and kill the baby. After living in Egypt for some time, I saw an angel once again in a dream, telling me that King Herod had died and it was safe to take our baby back home.
DEBUNK: Thank you Mary and Joseph for sharing your story. There is one last conspiracy theory with information “they don’t want you to know” that puzzles me because it might discredit your whole story.
MARY: And that is…
DEBUNK: In researching for this episode, I found two distinct sources of information that I found hard to reconcile with each other. In one source that tells about the shepherds visited by the angels and so on, it says that eight days after Jesus was born he was circumcized. Then after performing purification rites at the temple (where they encountered Simeon and Anna), he and his parents travelled back home to Nazareth. The other source is the one that details the visit of the wisemen, and flight into Egypt. How do we explain this discrepancy between the sources?
JOSEPH: It turns out that both sources only tell part of the story, but both describe events that actually happened. Eight days after Jesus was born, we did have him circumcized and then the wisemen visited us in the house we had relocated to. It took us about ten days to travel down to Egypt and it was only a short time later that we made the return trip. So we were able to fulfill the requirements of the Law within the forty days alloted for that. Then we returned to Nazareth, and the two sources are joined with that.
DEBUNK: Thank you for clearing that up! Because even though I started offthis episode hoping to debunk the stories of angels, at some point I actually started to hope you would prove to me the stories were true. So I thank you personally for restoring my faith!
MARY: You are most welcome. And there is much more to the story that we didn’t have time to share.
JOSEPH: We should get together sometime and tell you more!
DEBUNK: We will do that, but for now, I just want to say to our podcast audience thank you for joining us to find out about Conspiracies of Christmas: What “Actually” Happened. (Closing music, etc.)
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