1/14/2025

The Epiphanies of Impossible Women: Tokyo Godfathers, the Virgin Mary, and Trans Nativity

The last flickering light of Christmas just blinked gracefully out, and like all good, fading lights, it portends a journey.

Last week was the Feast of the Epiphany for good Catholic girls like me. It’s meant as a commemoration of the final triumph of Christmas: the visitation by the Magi. 

Given its proximity to presents and my participation in things like "nativity plays" through my church growing up, the Christmas story has always been ubiquitous, but this year it hit me in an entirely new way. 

This particular bout of faithful introspection was triggered by my mother, letting me know that she and my sister just sat down to watch my favorite Christmas movie: Tokyo Godfathers. 

Directed by iconic anime director Satoshi Kon, Godfathers has unexpectedly superseded Satoshi Kon’s other famous work, Perfect Blue as my favorite movie of his. Set on a frosty Christmas Eve in Tokyo, the film follows three homeless people (Gin, a paternal drunk, Miyuki, a tough, streetwise teenager, and Hana, a theatrical trans woman) after they stumble upon a lost infant child. 

As they stumble through a night of intersecting pasts, yakuza bosses, violence, and tears, the group reconcile with each other, their lives on the streets, and their miraculous new infant in tow. 

And, of course, I am drawn to Hana, the caterwauling and kind-hearted woman of the trio, who jumps to conclusions, invokes providence, and demands better from her friends while sprinting away from her own traumatic past. Casting a trans woman as one of the Magi gently asked me to consider our role in the Christmas story. Where were the women like me? Was there room for us, even in the stable among the animals? And then I found it.

In the gospel of Luke, when Gabriel appears to Mary to announce the Good News, it is a trumpeting of pomp and bombast, festooning the portended babe with titles like Son of the Highest and proclaiming: 

…he shall reign over the house of Jacob forever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end.

Mary's reaction is not joy or awe or fear. She asks a question:

How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?

And the angel explains it simply enough, that she had been visited by the Holy Spirit. Her pregnancy is a miracle. And then he says it, my favorite verse in the whole big Bible:

For with God nothing shall be impossible.

Mary responds with her usual steadfast humility.

Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word.

There’s a crude joke in the transfemme community: “Just because we can’t get pregnant, doesn’t mean you can’t try.” When I think of Mary, similarly faced with her own biology, I can’t help but think of the joke. The virgin. The trans woman. We both can’t get pregnant, but that doesn’t mean we can’t believe. It doesn’t mean we can’t try. 

Mary accepts the miracle, accepts the baby in her untouched womb, accepts her role in changing the world. Then she does what we all do: she tells her cousin, Elizabeth. 

Only to discover that Elizabeth has recently been blessed with her own miracle. Barren in her old age, she was given a child again by the Holy Spirit. When she saw Mary, her babe leaped in her womb. 

And she spake in a loud voice: Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of they womb.

And there you have it. The great beginning of salvation. Two women talking. Two women who chose faith over the facts of their biology. Mary, the suddenly pregnant virgin. Elizabeth, the once-barren expectant mother. In God nothing is impossible.

I know that joy. I know the hot light of God whenever I talk with another trans woman. That rapturous moment of appraising our changed bodies, our newly minted euphorias, and looking at each other with eyes that ask, humble as Mary:

Can you believe it?

And I suddenly find that I can. I can believe in my body, born a man, forged in coarse puberty, hardened into a life of depression, suddenly and slowly reborn into glorious femininity. I can believe that God knows me, that my transition is done according to His will. 

Behold the handmaid of the world. Be it unto me according to thy word.

I, too, am one of God's impossible women. I am blessed. As we near inauguration day and my state continues its almost gleeful restriction of trans rights, I have to remind myself of these blessings. I have to remember that in Mary and Elizabeth’s time, their world was also set against them. 

Mary feared for her life as an unmarried woman with child. If Joseph hadn’t stood by her, the Son of God would’ve died with her, put to death for adultery. The first thing the couple did after accepting the good news was flee. They did what they had to do to survive a world that would hurt them.

And then, of course, there’s the Magi again. I never paid much attention to them before. Three men that saw a star, followed it to a baby, gave those three gifts that seemed like the worst things to give a baby (what kind of baby wants “myrrh?”), and then left. And then I went to mass, and my priest offered more context. 

Herod, fearful of being usurped by the rumored birth of a new King of the Jews, ordered the death of every two-years-old-or-younger male child.  This stains the entire kingdom with innocent blood and the madness of a small men desperately clinging to his power with the chipped tip of a sword.

When the Magi announce their intentions to Herod, to seek audience with the new king, he asks them to return and send word to him, so that he can worship as well. As soon as they see the Christ child, however, they decide not to. They go home by another way and leave Herod in the dark.

The Magi witness a miracle and decide to protect it from a tyrannical regime, from oppression, from death. They are led to Bethlehem by the stars and led home by their consciences. As things continue to intensify in my state, I look up and see the shadows of Herod in the stars. 

I see the impossible women around me. I see the long journey towards our salvation ahead. I see the stars. I see a king who would put us to death to preserve his own power.

I see hope. Even in the cold. Even as bitter evidence of climate change melts all around after the largest Atlanta snowfall I’ve ever seen in my life.

I see us. In the greatest story ever told, I see us. I see women sharing in joy, and I see God in us and I smile in spite of everything. 

“For with God nothing shall be impossible.”

Nothing.