No Room At The Inn – The Holiday Inn

Gather round, children—yes, you full-grown, tax-paying children—because your Uncle Don has another classic Christmas tale guaranteed to warm your heart this holiday season.

Now that original Christmas story features a trip that goes horribly bad. But before we get to that one, let’s revisit a little misadventure your Uncle Don had himself. Picture it: 1985. Uncle Don and his pregnant wife decide to take one last “grown-ups only” vacation to Cape Cod before parenthood shut that door for a good long while.

And honestly, it was a great trip. On our final day, we finished everything on our vacation checklist by lunchtime. Since we were flying out of Boston the next morning—and our reserved hotel was south of the city—your Uncle Don had a brilliant idea, children. We’d cancel the reservation and just drive up the highway until we found a place closer to the airport. Simple. Efficient. Foolproof.

Except it wasn’t.

We spotted a hotel, pulled off the interstate… booked solid. Next exit—full. Next place—was a Holiday Inn. There’s always space available there. But there was no room at the inn, children – the Holiday Inn. And there I stood in the lobby, my pregnant wife beside me, stranded in the wild, exotic land of Boston. (Trust me, for a Midwesterner, it counts as foreign territory.) Suddenly, Uncle Don felt a deep, personal connection to the Biblical Joseph that he had never quite appreciated before.

Now For the Original Bad Trip

Joseph, of course, had carefully planned his and Mary’s journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem. He wanted to arrive just in time—close enough to the due date for the experienced women in his family to deliver the baby, but not so early that the aunties and grandmothers would start doing calendar math. And oh, children, those old Jewish ladies could do the math. They knew Mary was nine months pregnant, but had been married for less than that. Some of them women might be cruel to the “harlot” Joseph had dragged into the family.

But Joseph, as a typical man, greatly underestimated two things:

1.    How many breaks a very pregnant woman riding a donkey would need.

2.    How much a donkey on bumpy, unpaved roads could speed up labor.

By the time they reached Bethlehem, his whole plan had unraveled. The first inn inside the city? Sold out for days. The innkeeper basically tossed them out and pointed them toward the stable. A kinder man might’ve said, “Sure, have the baby in my place,” but no—off to the barn they went.

And then Joseph, exhausted from travel, had to deliver his own baby. We celebrate Mary—and rightly so—but Joseph was chosen just as carefully. A carpenter with skilled, steady hands - able to keep his cool under extreme pressure. The trip was a disaster, but the ending? Pretty spectacular.

Now Back to Boston

So there I was, your Uncle Don, standing in that lobby, stressed and unsure what to do next. I’d dragged my pregnant wife into this mess, and I wasn’t about to leave without a plan. There was a pay phone—yes, children, a real pay phone—and we had a bag of quarters and a travel book. That’s how it was done in ancient times, children: pay phone, quarters, printed guidebook. 

Two young women were working the desk. Let’s call them Amy and Becky. As we started flipping through the book, Amy told us we had to leave the hotel since we weren’t guests. No one else was in the lobby, we weren’t causing trouble—she was just irritated we were still there. And that made your Uncle Don furious, because now she was putting his pregnant wife at risk. But I wasn’t leaving that pay phone, it was my literal lifeline - so I just stared her down in silence and continued with the task at hand.

We made our first call—no luck. Then Becky quietly motioned me over. She could tell we were in trouble. I explained what was going on, and she told me about another hotel just two blocks away, hidden from the highway. It was under renovation, but likely had rooms. She even offered to call for us. That small act of kindness saved the day. The hotel was perfectly fine, we had a good meal, and we made it home safely. My little “Joseph moment” ended well too.

And that, children, is the moral of this festive Christmas tale. Don’t be like that cranky seahag Amy, snapping at people for no good reason. Be like Becky—the angel who stepped in with kindness when it mattered.

Merry Christmas, children! And to all a good night—and an absolutely tremendous New Year!