Joseph: Harvey Gillman’s original father Christmas

‘I will always be the old man at the back, a small player in the grandiose drama.’

‘I sit here in amazement of what they will say of me. None of them knew me, except that I was his father. What they mean by father I do not understand. They will write that Mary was overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, that she bore a child, that an angel told me to marry her in spite of that. And I, in the goodness of my heart, being a “principled man”, will obey. Then, having taken away my paternity, they will call me saint. They will make me “rotector of the church”/ What is a church?

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