incarnation

Maybe the best few pages one could read on the incarnation are found in the chapter The Grand Miracle in Lewis' book, Miracles. Lewis concludes his discussion with this:

The doctrine of the Incarnation work into our minds quite differently. It digs beneath the surface, works through the rest of our knowledge by unexpected channels, harmonises best with our deepest apprehensions and our 'second thoughts', and in union with these undermines our superficial opinions. It has little to say to the man who is still certain that everything is going to the dogs, or that everything is getting better and better, or that everything is God, or that everything is electricity ... (the Incarnation) illuminates and orders all other phenomena, explains both our laughter and our logic, our fear of the dead and our knowledge that it is somehow good to die, and which at one stoke covers what multitudes of separate theories will hardly cover for us if this is rejected.

There is no real explanation that can be given to why we are so drawn to these nativity stories. Matthew and Luke tell such different tales, yet they become for us facets of a diamond that illumines a deeper truth that we'll never get our hands completely around. If we could, it wouldn't be so deep and it wouldn't be so true. We can only tell the story and let it do to us what God wishes.