As a child, I was one of those kids who asked lots of questions and, if I wasn't satisfied with the answers I got, I asked follow-up questions. Needless to say, I was tough on my teachers but, especially on my poor Sunday School teachers and especially about the Christmas story. Some of those questions have stuck with me throughout the years and were the inspiration for this book.

Every manger scene, for example, depicts a gathering of the baby Jesus, Mary, Joseph, shepherds, various animals and the "wise men." I was fascinated by the "wise men." I was even a wise man in a Christmas pageant one year. I wanted to know how the wise men, who were not Jews and who came from hundreds of miles away, knew that a star signaled the birth of a Jewish king, while the Jews, apparently, did not? How did they arrive in Bethlehem to worship baby Jesus at the same time as the nearby shepherds in the adjacent fields? How long did Mary and Joseph stay in Bethlehem before they traveled back to their home in Nazareth? How could the wise men "follow" a star? Why didn't Herod send his own people to Bethlehem? If Herod met with the wise men within days of Jesus' birth, why would Herod order all male children under the age of two to be killed? Why not just the newborns? The list went on and on. Like I said, my poor Sunday School teachers...

Anyway, the Christmas story invited critical thinking even from a child like me, and I think God loves and indulges the inquisitive minds of those who seek Him. This fictional story is not presented to challenge accepted religious thinking or to promote a revisionist history of the events any more than the song, "The Little Drummer Boy," composed by Katherine Davis, advocated the insertion of a drummer into the manger scene. Two Stars - A Christmas Story simply allowed me to revisit some of those annoying questions from my youth and to explore them through a much older lens. Even though I have offered a slightly different "take" on some parts of the Christmas story, the awesome birth of Jesus remains inviolate and, I submit, would be no less magnificent, even if parts of this fanciful story were found in the scriptural account.