This is a delightful little book which is just long enough to make you curious, but not so long that the academia makes your brain sore. The setting is in our times, making it relate to every member of the human race yet it points to the past and far into the future. Here indeed is a nativity story embedded in the whole of the Bible not just in the passages churned out during advent. Rarely if ever has a legitimate dragon featured in the story of the stable, yet here in this new rendering of the meaning of Christmas the relevance of John's fifth gospel comes into our consciousness like a beacon of hope in an evil world.

This book is a christmas apologetic and can be read by atheists, agnostics, faiths rich and poor alike for it begs the personal question as to whether we really believe that the ugliness of this world is caused by our sin. If so, Jesus was birthed by God, crucified on a cross and triumphed over a very real dragon called satan by being raised from the dead, all for the sake of man.

Ruth Aird, Edinburgh Theological Seminary