Star Over Bethlehem

Star Over Bethlehem is a short story with a religious motif, written by Agatha Christie.

Summary
Mary is alone in the stable in Bethlehem with the baby Jesus when she receives a visitation from an angel. He tells the virgin that she has been permitted a glimpse of the future and shows Jesus alone and afraid in the Garden of Gethsemane as He prays before his arrest, then a vision of Jesus carrying His cross on the way to His crucifixion, and then finally on the cross as He is declared by the High Priest as a blasphemer. The angel offers Mary the choice of giving the baby back to God to avoid these agonies of the future and tells her that she should regard the choice as hers alone with no compunction from God himself. Mary suddenly remembers the smile on her son’s face as He looked on His sleeping disciples in Gethsemane and a similar look on the face of one of the criminals also on a cross at Golgotha. She refuses the offer that the angel makes to her. He vanishes as Joseph comes into the stable. The angel is then revealed to be Satan in disguised form who vows to come back one day and tempt Jesus himself. As he flashes through the sky towards hell, his passage is mistaken for a star by the Three Wise Men.

Characters

 * Mary
 * Jesus
 * Joseph
 * Satan

Publication

 * The short story was first published in 1946 December issue of Woman's Journal.
 * It was first published in book form in the 1965 book Star Over Bethlehem and other stories.