Once in royal David's city Stood a lowly cattle-shed, Where a mother laid her baby In a manger for his bed. Mary was that mother mild, Jesus Christ her little child.

-Alexander, Cecil Frances
  'Once in Royal David's City'.

And so it was, that, whilethey were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.

-Bible (NewTestament)
St Luke 2:6^7.

It was the winter wild While the Heaven born child All meanly wrapped in the rude manger lies; Nature in awe to him Had doffed her gaudy trim With her great Master so to sympathize; It was no season then for her To wanton with the sun, her lusty paramour.

-Milton,John
  'On the Morning of Christ's Nativity','The Hymn', stanza 3.

The essence of Christianity is the appeal to the life of Christ as a revelation of the nature of God and of his agency in the world. The record is fragmentary, inconsistent and uncertain† But there can be no doubt as to the elements in the record that have evoked the best in human nature. The Mother, the Child and the bare manger: the lowly man, homeless and self- forgetful, with his message of peace, love and sympathy: the suffering, the agony, the tender words as life ebbed, the final despair: and the whole with the authority of supreme victory.

-Whitehead, Alfred North
 Adventures of Ideas.