No Room at the Hotel

DESCRIPTION: "There was no room, no room, they had no room, There was no room, no room at the hotel." At the time Jesus was to be born, the hotel was full. The Virgin Mary was wandering in the night. The people were wicked. The hotel staff may be forgiven
AUTHOR: Song segment unknown; story by Vera Ward Hall (c. 1902-1964)
EARLIEST DATE: 1945 (interview with Vera Ward Hall)
KEYWORDS: Jesus hardtimes religious hardheartedness poverty travel childbirth animal family
FOUND IN: US(SE)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Rosenbaum-FolkVisionsAndVoices, pp. 152-153, "No Room at the Hotel" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud #13974
RECORDINGS:
Vera Ward Hall, "No Room at the Inn" (on LomaxCD1706)
NOTES [216 words]: This is very loosely based on Luke 2:1-7, which does indeed say that Jesus was born in a stable because there was no room at the inn (and it certainly would have been an inn, not the "hotel" of Rosenbaum-FolkVisionsAndVoices's version -- the modern hotel concept did not exist at the time!). However, the song omits the census which allegedly caused the disruptions (and which is never mentioned in secular history and is highly unlikely with Rome and the Parthian Empire at dagger-points; Rome could not afford the disruption a census would have caused).
Also, Luke has only a single sentence about the inn being full. There is no hint that the inn's staff was wicked, or of a distinction between the workers and management. Inns at this time were almost certainly family businesses, with father, mother, and children doing the work; they might have a few employees, but the manager was part of the staff. Thus this song is guilty of many anachronisms, and almost all of them unfair.
The behavior of the animals in the stable is equally fictitious; the Lukan account not only doesn't mention animals, it doesn't even explicitly mention a stable! We call it a stable simply because it contained a "manger" (though the Greek word, φατνη, phatne, feed-trough, sometimes extends to mean a stable). - RBW
Last updated in version 5.0
File: Rose152

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