Why “nativity” is a great word
The circumstances or fact of a person's birth, its precise time and place, or, most specifically, the event of Christ’s birth as celebrated at Christmas. From Middle English *nativite*, from Anglo-Norman *nativite* and Middle French *nativite*, from Latin *nativitas*, from *nativus* ('born, innate'), from *nasci* ('to be born'). Unlike "birth," a neutral biological event, or "genealogy," a charting of ancestral lines, "nativity" fixes a life in its cosmic and social moment—the stars presiding, the landscape waiting. It is the chill of a Bethlehem night, the breath of oxen warming a stable, the casting of a horoscope that begins, “You were born under a certain sky.” It is the story we tell about our own beginning, the instant when possibility first becomes particular and nothing is ever again quite as it was.