The original stories of Christmas are not toned-down, pasted-together children’s stories. They are not part of the first Christian creeds, and they do not agree in details. In their first forms they are scandalous, border-breaking, and sharply political cries of hope.

They include a genealogy of outsiders, an unmarried mother and a man willing to step beyond religious law, a call to fill the hungry and send the rich away empty, a birth in a welcoming stranger’s home, traveling astronomers, a government-ordered massacre of children, migration, a threatened empire and an army of angels.

To learn the historical context of the original Christmas stories – to hear and to re-think these stories, with all their original, border-breaking, and explosive cultural, political, and spiritual implications – Duane Clinker will host presentations with artifacts and public discussion this month at local libraries. The presentations, titled “Manifestos of Liberation: The Original Stories of ‘Xmas,’” will be provided over the course of two sessions and are based on Biblical and extra-Biblical sources in historical contexts.

At the Warwick Central Public Library, located at 600 Sandy Lane in Warwick, the first session, “In a time of trouble,” will be held Tuesday, Dec. 10, at 7 p.m. The second session, “Uprising of Hope,” will be held on Tuesday, Dec. 17, at 7 p.m.

At the Cranston Public Library’s Central Library, located at 140 Sockanosset Cross Road in Cranston, the first session will be held on Sunday, Dec. 15, at 2 p.m., followed by the second session on Sunday, Dec. 22, at 2 p.m.

Clinker is a retired Methodist liberationist pastor and a community/labor organizer in Rhode Island.