The Christmas story begins not in Bethlehem’s manger, but in two separate encounters: Mary at home in Nazareth and Elizabeth in Jerusalem’s temple precincts.

This geographical detail matters more than we typically acknowledge.

When Gabriel appears to Mary, she is likely at her daily tasks, grinding grain, perhaps, or drawing water. God crashes into her mundane Monday.

Elizabeth’s husband Zechariah, meanwhile, receives his angelic visitation while performing priestly duties in the holy of holies. One annunciation sanctifies the domestic; the other validates the institutional.

But here is where it gets interesting: Mary does not stay home, and Elizabeth does not remain at the temple.

Mary “went with haste” to Elizabeth’s house in the hill country. The journey between these two spaces, home and temple, ordinary and sacred, becomes the story’s beating heart.

The movement matters

We have sanitised this journey in countless Christmas pageants, but consider the reality.

Mary, newly pregnant and unmarried, travels roughly eighty miles through difficult terrain to reach her older cousin. She is leaving the safety of familiar walls for an uncertain welcome.

She is moving from private revelation to communal confirmation.

This movement mirrors our own spiritual lives. Faith cannot remain cloistered in either realm.

A Christianity confined to church buildings becomes disconnected from the struggles where people actually live. But faith that never gathers, never connects to tradition and community, risks becoming untethered individualism.

Our faith needs roots in tradition,
where we remember who we are.
It also demands we carry it home,
into our relationships,
our work,
and our ordinary days.

Where God shows up

The Magnificat, Mary’s revolutionary song of justice and mercy, erupts not in the temple but in Elizabeth’s home.

John the Baptist leaps in Elizabeth’s womb at a kitchen threshold, not during a liturgy. The holy invades the everyday, and the everyday reveals itself as holy.

Today’s church often forces an artificial choice: traditional worship or relevant engagement, sacred space or secular impact.

Mary and Elizabeth reject this binary. They move between temple and home because both spaces need God’s presence, and God’s presence transforms both spaces.

Christmas geography

As we ready for Christmas, we are invited into this same movement.

Our faith needs roots in tradition, in gathered worship, in the temple spaces where we remember who we are. But it also demands we carry that faith home, into our relationships, our work, and our ordinary days.

The journey between these poles is not spiritual exercise for its own sake.

It is the path Mary walked, discovering that God inhabits both the extraordinary and the mundane, waiting for us in temple incense and kitchen conversations alike.

• John Singarayar SVD holds a doctorate in Anthropology. He is an author of several books and regularly contributes to academic conferences and publications focusing on sociology, anthropology, tribal studies, spirituality, and mission.
• This is John’s first piece for Flashes of Insight, and we look forward to more of his contributions in 2026.