Do we have room at the inn (or guestroom)?

Christmas is right around the corner, so here's a quick little read that might make you wonder if the common outdoor nativity scene has it wrong. Some scholars suggest that in Luke's account what is traditionally referred to as an "inn" is better translated as "guestroom."

"[W]e should probably envision Mary and Joseph staying in the home of relatives or friends, a home which was crowded due to the census being taken, a home where Luke tells us there was no longer any room in “ the guest room." Consequently, Mary gave birth to her child perhaps in the family room and placed the baby in the stone manger."

Maybe one of the most notoriously inhospitable hosts wasn't so inhospitable afterall...

Relatedly, Andrew Sandoval-Strausz, whose book Hotel: An American History was just released, has a little slideshow essay over at Slate here.

"The American hotel system was revolutionary because it offered hospitality that was indeed institutional. Hotel-keepers were more interested in serving a relatively broad clientele than in currying favor with prominent patrons. The contrast with Europe was ably expressed by an English writer who warned in 1860 that visitors to the United States 'must not look for the obsequious attentions which greet a new arrival at an English hotel.'"

It sounds like the American contribution to the hotel industry was to promote impersonal hospitality (seems a little bit oxymoronic). How did the US become so uniquely inhospitable that it created the modern hotel industry? While Sandoval-Strausz attributes the spread of hotels around the United States to interstate commerce, the fact remains that at some point, Americans gave up their responsibility for acts of hospitality and left it to commercial enterprise to handle.