History Main / AwayInAManger

* ''Series/{{Scrubs}}'' has Turk delivering a baby of a teenage runaway late on Christmas Eve, but who escapes the hospital just before going into labour - Turk finds her by following a star, and after the birth, everyone gathers round for a nice Christmas carol. [[GoldenMoment Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww...]]

* Happens at the end of the French comedy ''Film/LesRoisMages'' (The Three Kings).

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[[quoteright:350:[[ComicBook/TheMazeAgency https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thecrimebeforechristmasmazeagency.png]]]]
[[caption-width-right:350:[-Away in a manger\\
No crib for a bed\\
Hey mister bad guys,\\
Please don't pop a cap in Pa's head-]]]

* ''Series/AllMyChildren'''s Opal's late-in-life pregnancy culminates in a Christmas Eve delivery in her living room, with her husband Palmer playing DeliveryGuy.
* ''Series/AsTheWorldTurns''' Lily also gives birth on Christmas Eve, and symbolically names her daughter Natalie.
* Downplayed (it's in a farmhouse rather than a stable, and the mother is a dog), but the key elements are there in the Christmas episode of ''Series/AllCreaturesGreatAndSmall2020'' when James and Helen (a wise man and a shepherd... or close enough, anyway) assist at the birth of puppies in the early hours of Christmas morning.
* Variation in ''{{Series/Bones}}''. It’s not Christmas Eve, but Brennan is forced to stop at a hotel when she goes into labor. There’s no room because of a convention and the manager directs her and Booth to a barn structure on the property where Christine is born.

[[folder:Comics]]

* In ''ComicBook/TheMazeAgency'' #11, the heavily pregnant daughter of a mob boss and her husband go on the run on Christmas Eve, and Jen and Gabe go searching for them. They take refuge in a GreasySpoon called The Star Diner. The woman goes into labour just as Jen locates her. Jen delivers the baby, browbeating the two mob thugs who were tailing her into helping her by fetching hot water and towels.

[[folder:Film]]
* In the nuclear holocaust movie ''Film/{{Threads}}'', Ruth gives birth in a stable because a guard dog prevented her from reaching the nearby farmhouse. She is then seen in a mock nativity tableau, sitting around a fire with other survivors on Christmas Day.

* In ''Rabbit Test'', Billy Crystal plays a pregnant man on the lam who eventually gives birth on Christmas Eve while his gypsy girlfriend and a wacko doctor attend him in a schoolbus in a junkyard. The girlfriend's three brothers are dressed in magi robes outside.
* Happens at the end of the French comedy ''Les Rois Mages'' (The Three Kings).

* Hiccup from ''WesternAnimation/HowToTrainYourDragon'' already embodies the MessianicArchetype in a number of ways, but Hiccup was born not just as a hiccup (small, sickly and weak), but ''prematurely'' as well, making his manger metaphorical. It's nothing short of a miracle that he survived to adulthood in those times, ''especially'' when his village was attacked by massive, flying monsters of varying shapes and sizes on a near-daily basis.

* ''Film/{{Sheitan}}'' takes place on Christmas Eve. Joseph's wife Marie is pregnant. And Joseph tells a local folktale about a child born at the stroke of midnight on Christmas Eve...
* ''Film/DividedWeFall'': This film set in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia features a guy named Josef and his wife Marie. Marie is pregnant with a baby that isn't Josef's, but is rather a "son of David" (in this case, an actual Jewish man named David, whom Josef and Marie were hiding in their apartment). There are three visitors there to observe the birth (one Red Army soldier, one member of the Czech regular army, and one member of the Czech Resistance). And if that isn't obvious enough, earlier in the film Josef imagines his wife's face superimposed on the portrait of the Virgin Mary that hangs in the apartment.

[[folder:Live Action TV]]

* Alice in ''Series/TheVicarOfDibley'' gave birth while on stage playing Mary in the village nativity play. Everybody thought [[AllPartOfTheShow it was an act]]. She had to be seen to by a vet.
-->'''Alice''': I'm confused. Have I, in fact, given birth to the Son of God?\\
'''Geraldine''': No, because for one thing, she's a girl, isn't she.
* The last-ever BBC episode of ''Series/BirdsOfAFeather'' had Tracey giving birth in an Irish stable on Christmas Eve.
* ''Series/TheThinBlueLine'': In "[[ChristmasEpisode Yuletide Spirit]]", a travelling hippie couple arrive in the station on Christmas Eve. Naturally, the woman is heavily pregnant and goes into labor.
* ''Series/TheRoyleFamily'' had a ChristmasEpisode that used this trope.

* ''Series/{{Scrubs}}'' has Turk delivering a baby of a teenage runaway late on Christmas Eve, but who escapes the hospital just before going into labour - Turk finds her by following a star, and after the birth, everyone gathers round for a nice Christmas carol. [[GoldenMoment Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww...]]
* ''Series/TheSuiteLifeOfZackAndCody'''s ChristmasEpisode, "Christmas at the Tipton", provides the page quote. The episode featured a couple named Mary and Joseph, and Mary gave birth [[BornInAnElevator in the Tipton elevator]] on Christmas Eve. And since the show takes place in a hotel, there was "no room at the inn". Everyone noticed the coincidence and hung a lampshade on it, except for [[TheDitz London]] who didn't get it.
* Happens in the "An Angel on the Roof" episode of ''Series/TouchedByAnAngel''. The episode has several groups of characters being brought together by the angels at a motel on Christmas Eve, including an illegal and pregnant immigrant couple. It climaxes not only with the wife giving birth, but with everyone staging a full "living Nativity" tableau that protects the couple from arrest and deportation (they were related to the motel owner; the angels manipulated circumstances to unite them).
* ''Series/{{Nightingales}}'' has a heavily pregnant woman named Mary arrive on Christmas Eve at the office block where the show is set. After assuring them she's not an allegory, she then proceeds to give birth to, among other things, a toaster, the Pope, Creator/HaroldPinter and a tandem.
* ''Series/WalkerTexasRanger'' not only has this, the happy couple are named Jose (who gave up a life of crime in a gang and is now running a woodworking shop) and Maria. That's fairly subtle for this show.

* Baby William's birth and mysterious conception on ''Series/TheXFiles'' holds allusions to the Jesus birth story, though it takes place in mid-May rather than December. After going through a pregnancy that shouldn't have physically been able to happen, Scully is whisked away to an abandoned town by fellow agent Monica Reyes to give birth to her son, who is wanted by Super Soldiers intent on kidnapping him. While going out for a cigarette, Monica spies a proverbial "Star of Bethlehem", which Mulder eventually uses to find them. At the end of the episode, the Lone Gunmen step in as the Three Wise Men, visiting Scully and the baby at her apartment bearing gifts. Not only a parallel to Jesus himself: prophecy put him as the saviour of the human race from impending alien invasion. Poor little guy.
* Parodied in the ''Series/{{Bottom}}'' episode "Holy", when Richie finds a baby left on the doorstep of the flat during their Christmas party. True to form, following a few similarities to the Nativity story he lets this go [[AGodAmI completely to his head]]. Convinced that he's the "Mother of God" and has maintained his virginity because he's "better than everyone else in the world", he threatens that the other characters will be sent to Hell by [[{{God}} his 'husband']]. [[spoiler: It turns out it's the grandson of their landlord, who left him on the step because he couldn't be bothered dealing with the kid himself.]]

* Subtly subverted/inverted in the [[spoiler: seventh season]] ChristmasEpisode of ''Series/HowIMetYourMother,'' where [[spoiler: Robin finds out she's infertile and "loses" her imaginary future children.]]

* A variant happens in an episode of ''Series/TwoPointFourChildren'' when Rona finds an abandoned baby at Christmas.
* In a YetAnotherChristmasCarol episode of ''Series/DrQuinnMedicineWoman'', aside from her adventures regarding the first trope, Dr. Mike also has to contend with this one, as she has to assist the pregnant female half of a young couple who have run off and eloped to escape their disapproving families, and have conveniently taken refuge in a stable.
* ''Series/{{ER}}'''s Jing Mei Chen gives birth on Christmas Eve, to the child she intends to give up for adoption.

* The Spanish movie ''The Day of the Beast'' hinges about TheAntichrist being born on Christmas Eve. In Madrid. Under the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puerta_de_Europa KIO Towers]].

* In MikeRoyko's humorous column "Mary and Joe: Chicago Style," the Nativity is set in 1960s UsefulNotes/{{Chicago}}, where there's no room for a poor couple from out of town in any of the city's social services. Joseph gets locked up for vagrancy, and Mary gets treated for postpartum delusion when she mentions who her baby's father is. Meanwhile, the Magi are mistaken for hippies and detained for illegal possession of gold and suspicious herbs.

Basically, when a character gives birth on Christmas Eve/Christmas Day in a direct imitation of the Nativity as lined out in Literature/TheFourGospels. May be used as the high point of a ChristmasEpisode or the dramatic conclusion to a pregnancy storyline. Of course comes packaged with the entire MadonnaArchetype.

* In ''Series/TheSuiteLifeOfZackAndCody'', the ChristmasEpisode featured a couple named Mary and Joseph, and Mary gave birth [[BornInAnElevator in the Tipton elevator]] on Christmas Eve. And since the show takes place in a hotel, there was "no room at the inn". Everyone noticed the coincidence and hung a lampshade on it, except for [[TheDitz London]] who didn't get it.

* The last-ever BBC episode of ''Series/BirdsOfAFeather'' had Sharon giving birth in an Irish stable on Christmas Eve.

* Viciously parodied in a ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'' ChristmasSpecial, where Peter denies help to a husband and his highly pregnant wife, ON Christmas Eve, [[UpToEleven after he's just finished retelling the story of Jesus birth]], and goes as far as threatening them with a gun.

* In ''Series/TheSuiteLifeOfZackAndCody'', the ChristmasEpisode featured a couple named Mary and Joseph, and Mary gave birth [[BornInAnElevator in the Tipton elevator]] on Christmas Eve. And since the show takes place in a hotel, there was "no room at the inn". Everyone noticed the coincidence and hung a lampshade on it, except for [[TheDitz London]] who [[WhatAnIdiot didn't get it]].

It's Christmas Eve and you are a heavily pregnant woman. Luckily, your due date is still a few weeks away, leaving you free to go out and enjoy the celebrations ... but wait! Before the night is over you ''will'' end up in a stable, on the steps of a church or a similarly [[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotSymbolic symbolic location]], giving birth as the clock strikes midnight. And don't be surprised if there are shepherds nearby or [[StarOfBethlehem a star overhead]].

Basically, when a character gives birth on Christmas Eve/Christmas Day in a direct imitation of the Nativity as lined out in Literature/TheFourGospels. May be used as the high point of a ChristmasEpisode or the dramatic conclusion to a pregnancy storyline.

* Alice in ''Series/TheVicarOfDibley'' gave birth while on stage playing Mary in the village nativity play. Everybody thought [[AllPartOfTheShow it was an act]]. She had to be seen to by a vet. Is very much a SugarWiki/{{Heartwarming Moment|s}}.

** Also a SugarWiki/{{Funny Moment|s}}.
-->'''Jim''': Are you sure it's a good idea to have Herod take care of Jesus?

* The BritCom ''Series/Nightingales}}'' has a heavily pregnant woman named Mary arrive on Christmas Eve at the office block where the show is set. After assuring them she's not an allegory, she then proceeds to give birth to, among other things, a toaster, the Pope, Creator/HaroldPinter and a tandem.

* In the Christmas episode of ''Series/{{Cuckoo}}'', Lorna finds out she's pregnant despite the fact that (as far as she knows) her husband has had a vasectomy. There's numerous {{Allusion}}s to the bible story in the episode.

* The BritCom ''Nightingales'' has a heavily pregnant woman named Mary arrive on Christmas Eve at the office block where the show is set. After assuring them she's not an allegory, she then proceeds to give birth to, among other things, a toaster, the Pope, Creator/HaroldPinter and a tandem.

* In ''Franchise/{{Bobbins|verse}}'', Shelley notes that Amy's pregnancy has resulted in "[[WaxingLyrical Our own personal Jesus!]] [[Music/DepecheMode Someone to hear our prayers.]] ''[[LampshadeHanging Someone who cares.]]''" However, the baby is born in February, right on schedule.

* Zigzagged in ''WesternAnimation/StevenUniverse''. Steven is a few months old in the WholeEpisodeFlashback "Three Gem and a Baby", which is set in the winter. Baby Steven had an unconventional birth, and as a baby is visited by three beings bearing gifts for him. Towards the end of the episode, he is seen being held by his parent, who is dressed in blue.

* Alice in ''Series/TheVicarOfDibley'' gave birth while on stage playing Mary in the village nativity play. Everybody thought [[AllPartOfTheShow it was an act]]. She had to be seen to by a vet. Is very much a CrowningMomentOfHeartwarming.

** Also a CrowningMomentOfFunny.