I wanna wish you a Merry Christmas, I wanna wish you a Merry Christmas, I wanna wish you
a Merry Christmas from the bottom of my heart! Hi guys, Merry Christmas, spare my bad singing.
Do you know today is someone's birthday? Guess whose birthday is it on Christmas? No, it's
not Santa’s birthday. It’s the birthday of Jesus Christ and guess what, I only found
this out quite recently and do you know how wonderful is the story of the birth of Jesus
Christ? And today I am talking about it because it's Christmas day and we have every reason
to talk about the birth story of Jesus Christ. So join me to hear the story of Christ's birth
and to learn some useful English Vocabulary through this story. My name is Michelle and
you are watching me on your favourite channel Let's talk. So let's talk Christmas, Ho! Ho! Ho! Merry Christmas.
So let's read the story together. Do you like listening to stories? Then is the perfect
lesson for you. So let's start. Mary, a young teenager living in the village of Nazareth
was betrothed to be married to Joseph, a Jewish carpenter. One day, God sent an angel to visit
Mary. The angel told Mary that she would conceive a son by the power of the Holy Spirit. She
would give birth to this child and name him, Jesus. At first, Mary was petrified by the
angel's words. Being a virgin, Mary questioned the angel, how can this happen? The angel
explained that the child would be God’s own son and that is nothing is impossible
with God. The name of the child, he said would be Emmanuel. Humbled and wonderstruck, Mary
believed the angel of the Lord and rejoiced in God her saviour. So this is the first part
of the story. Tell me that this wasn't interesting? Now before we read the story further, let's
understand the meaning of some difficult words from what we just read.
So let's start with the first word. The first word that may have confused you would be betrothed.
What does it mean to be betrothed? So betrothed means to be engaged to somebody, alright before
the marriage. The first ceremony before the marriage. For example, Mary was betrothed
to Joseph.
The second word is, conceived. This means the moment when a woman becomes pregnant with
a baby. For example, Mary was conceived by the Son of God, which means she was going
to bear a child even though she was a virgin and that's why Mary was petrified. Now, what
does that mean? Okay, so petrified means when you are so scared that you are unable to move.
So as we read that in this story, Mary was petrified to see the angel of God. So she
was so scared that she saw the angel and she couldn’t move. So that means that she was
petrified. I'm sure you've been petrified as well.
Okay, now the next two words are humbled and wonderstruck. So, humbled means when you feel
very less about yourself because of something that someone has done for you. Okay and Wonderstruck
is when you are surprised or amazed by something. Alright so in this story, who was humbled
and wonderstruck? Think about it. It was Mary and why was she humbled? Because she realized
that God chose her so that she can give birth to God's own son. Okay, now the next word
is a very common English name. Think about it, Emmanuel. Yes, that's a common English
name and actually, it means God with us and would you believe this is another name of
Jesus Christ? That’s a revelation, I never knew about it. Okay, now it's time to read
the story further. I hope you're really enjoying this. Okay, so keep watching.
Let’s read it further. So while Mary was still betrothed to Joseph, she inexplicably
became pregnant, just as the angel had said. When Mary told Joseph, she was an expectant
mother; he must have been nonplussed and disgraced. He knew the child was not his own child and
Mary's obvious infidelity, carried a grave social stigma. Although Joseph's initial reaction
was to break the engagement with Mary but he treated Mary with extreme kindness. He
did not want to cause her any further shame and that's why he decided to not make it public.
But God sent an angel to Joseph in a dream to verify Mary’s story and to tell him that
his marriage to Mary was God's will. The angel explained that the child was conceived by
the Holy Spirit and that his name would be, yes we all know, Jesus and that he was the
Messiah, which means he was the saviour. Now when Joseph woke up from his dream, he willingly
obeyed God’s decision and took Mary to be his wife in spite of the public humiliation
he would face.
So now, here we have the meanings of some more difficult and complicated words from
what we read just now. So let's start exploring these difficult words. The first word that
may have confused you would be inexplicably, which means that something for which there
is no explanation. Like Mary got pregnant inexplicably, which means that there was no
explanation for her pregnancy as she was still a virgin. The second word is, nonplussed.
This means that you are so surprised and so confused that you don't know how to react.
Okay, so this is what Joseph's situation was. When he heard about Mary’s pregnancy, he
was so nonplussed that he did not know how to react. Okay, now the next word is infidelity.
So infidelity is the opposite of the word, fidelity. Fidelity means loyalty and infidelity
means to cheat somebody by having an affair outside your marriage. So as we just read,
Joseph's first thought was that Mary had committed infidelity against him, which was at that
time, a grave social stigma. Okay now, this is the complicated phrase for sure. Grave
here does not mean the grave in which you bury people but it means a serious social
stigma and a social stigma means when someone is not accepted in the society due to some
illness or something that they have done. So if Joseph decided to tell everyone that
Mary was pregnant outside their marriage, she would definitely have to face some grave
social stigma. Alright, the next word is initial reaction. So, what happens when you just hear
strange news? How do you react first? Yes, that’s what is an initial reaction. Your
first reaction upon hearing news and here, Joseph's first reaction to hearing about Mary's
pregnancy was to break his engagement with her but then he decided not to make it public.
Okay, this is a clever one, not to make it public means he decided to keep this matter
a secret. So when you don't want to tell a secret to everybody, this means that you don't
want to make it public but you rather want to keep it private. Alright, the next word
is, verify, verify means to confirm something. Here, the angel came to verify Mary’s story
and the last word for this section of the story is, public humiliation. Now, humiliation
means embarrassment. Okay, and public means in front of everyone. So when you are embarrassed
in front of everyone, that’s called public humiliation. Great, now let's read the final
part of the story. Are you enjoying this? I hope you're excited to read it further.
So here we go.
At that time, the King decreed that a census would be taken. Every person in the Roman
world had to return to his or her hometown to register. Joseph, being of the line of
David was required to go to Bethlehem, which is a small town in Israel to register with
Mary. Now while in Bethlehem, Mary gave birth to Jesus. Because of the census, the guest
house was overrun and Mary gave birth to Jesus in a crude stable. She wrapped the baby in
clothes and placed him in a manger. At this time, wise men from the east came singing
Halleluiah offering presents to the newborn baby.
Well here we are at the end of the story but not at the end of the lesson coz we are still
going to explore some more interesting words from this final part of the story.
Okay, so the first word we have here is, decreed. Decreed means to pass a law or to declare
a law. Now in this part of the story, the King decreed, as in, gave out a law that a
census would be taken. Now what is census, sounds like a strange word? Do you know about
it? Okay, let me tell you, census means an official count of the population. This happens
in every country. In every country, we have a census every year to find out how many people
are living in that country. So for the census, going back to the story, Joseph and Mary had
to go to their hometown, Bethlehem. Okay now when they went to Bethlehem, they saw that
the guesthouse was overrun. Okay run and overrun, okay what does overrun mean? Running too much?
No, overrun means when a place is occupied with too many people. Alright so the guesthouse
was overrun and that's why Mary had to give birth in a crude stable or a manger. Have
you heard of the word, manger? Okay, the manger is where Jesus was born. He was not born in
a palace; he was born in a humble manger. A manger is a place where there is a lot of
hay, grass and animals like horses and other cattle. Okay, so this is what, manger means
and as you saw that, in the end, men from the east came singing Halleluiah. Now that's
a very common word that you must have heard in some songs or if you’ve been to the church.
So Halleluiah is a combination of two Hebrew words, which means, praise the Lord.
Finally, here we are at the end of the lesson where we have finished learning some useful
vocabulary through a very interesting story. I hope this was fun for you and you would
come back for more story lessons with me. Thank you so much for watching this lesson.
A Merry, Merry, Merry Christmas to you. See you very soon, bye.