The welcome of the stranger has a long history. Christianity didn’t invent it—but it changed it in ways still felt every time someone opens a door.
Long before there were hotels, there was xenia. The ancient Greeks had a word for the sacred obligation to welcome the stranger—xenia, from xenos, stranger—and they took it seriously enough to place it under divine protection. Zeus himself, in his role as Zeus Xenios, was the guardian of travelers. The logic was elegant and slightly unnerving: any stranger arriving at your door might be a god in disguise, and you would
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