If you aren’t a Christian, the Christmas story can seem as far-fetched as Santa Claus.

Billions of people will celebrate Christmas this Thursday. It’s much more than a reason to decorate and spoil your kids or grandkids. It celebrates the birth of Jesus, who was born in Bethlehem to Mary and his earthly father, Joseph.

Jesus was no ordinary child. He was the fulfillment of the prophecy found in Isaiah 7:14, “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel,” which means “God with us.”

Isaiah 9 says, “He will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” Angels announced his birth, and wise men from the East came to visit him.

Jesus didn’t come to establish an earthly political kingdom. He came to save mankind from the curse of sin — just like Isaiah wrote hundreds of years before Jesus’ birth.

Isaiah prophesied, “But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”

But he didn’t stay dead. Easter celebrates how God raised Jesus from the dead, conquering death, hell and the grave. Thanks to Christ’s sacrifice, a sinner — that’s you and me — can have a saving relationship with God. As Romans 10:9 states, “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”

As a piece of literature, it’s the greatest story ever told. Think of the stakes. All of humanity faces eternal damnation. We have no hope of saving ourselves. God is righteous, and we have sinned. We deserve to spend eternity in hell.

But God — the two greatest words in the Bible — had a different plan. A plan he previewed in the Garden of Eden, in the Passover and in numerous prophecies. A plan that required an infinite, righteous God to be born as a human baby to a virgin mother.

For some, that premise makes this story as improbable as flying reindeer. Don’t Christians know that a virgin becoming pregnant is scientifically impossible?

You don’t have to be a skeptic to wonder this. After the angel Gabriel told Mary she would give birth to God’s son, she asked the obvious question.

“How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”

How do Christians resolve this paradox?

It starts with understanding the limits of science. Modern culture has elevated science, but it’s not the only source of truth. You know that it’s wrong to murder a three-year-old, but good luck finding a scientific basis for morality. Think about an important date. Do you run an experiment to learn when the Declaration of Independence was signed? Of course not. History is another source of truth.

Science is the study of the natural world. It’s important, and we all enjoy the technological advances that have come from applying scientific knowledge. But miracles, like Jesus’ conception, are supernatural events. By definition, they violate the laws of nature. For the Christian, this isn’t a contradiction because God isn’t bound by the natural laws He created.

Now, accepting that miracles are beyond the realm of science doesn’t prove the Virgin Birth occurred. But unlike a jolly man in the red suit hopping down chimneys, there is substantial historical evidence for Jesus’ life and resurrection.

Merry Christmas to the best readers in the country.

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