Shepherds – the only group separating them from the bottom of the heap socially was carpenters! Yet it was to this disparate group of people that the angelic host appeared (proof positive yet again the God can and will work with all sorts and conditions). Would they have sojourned to Bethlehem otherwise? Probably not because Luke’s account of the Birth Narrative suggests that the shepherds were oblivious to the star. The curiosity inculcated in them by the throng of angels seems to have inspired the shepherds to go seeking a babe wrapped in clothes and lying in a manger. They found the child just as the angels said. Beyond that discovery, nothing much else happened. The shepherds, however, wouldn’t let it go deciding that what they had been told and what they had seen was worth repeating to any who would listen. It appears, then, that they became the first evangelists. In our yearly celebration of the birth of Jesus, we have heard the angels sing and we have been to the crèche to see for ourselves the infant child of Mary. May that which we have heard and that which we have seen so inspire us in the coming days and weeks to do the work of evangelization – to tell this wonderfully powerful Story to any who would listen with the holy hope that some might actually hear.