My favorite gospel is the Gospel of Mark - because it's the earliest - so much so that text from it was lifted by the authors of Matthew and Luke to incorporate their own gospels. The perennial most popular gospel with most people is the Gospel of John (written near the end of 1st century) and yet it was the latest written - the furthermost removed from the events it accounts. The interesting thing is that the earliest gospel, Mark, and the last canonical gospel, John, do not have any nativity account whatsoever. And then most bewilderingly of all, Matthew and Luke, which have nativity accounts, have narratives that of a nativity of Jesus that are completely different narratives - and cannot be reasonably reconciled. Scholars have dug endlessly into the discrepancies and it just gets worse and worse the more their threads are tugged on. So Mark being the first gospel, starts its account with Jesus as an adult at the outset of his ministry. And John does as well. John, even though, it came later than the other 3 gospels, does not show any indication of redacting text from them - it is an independently sourced gospel. So Mark, and John, two totally independent gospels do not have a nativity account and begin their narratives of Jesus when he is an adult at the onset of his ministry (being baptized by John the Baptist). Matthew and Luke - both borrow text from Mark - and yet have two totally different narratives of a nativity story of Jesus - which then just leaps forward to when he is an adult at the onset of his ministry. Looks very much as though those two different nativity accounts were just embellishments. What early Christians really knew of Jesus is much more likely to be reflected in Mark - cross correlated in some respects with the epistles of the Apostle Paul.