Church Christmas Pageant: A Review

My family goes to church on Christmas eve. For the past few years, we’ve gone to the late service which starts at 10 pm, but you have to get there an hour beforehand. It is a lovely service but there has been some concern recently that the start time is a little late for some more elderly family members who would like to get home and go to bed. So this year we decided to go to the earlier service, at 4 pm, which doubles as the children’s Christmas pageant.

Now, I have to explain to you about me and this church Christmas pageant. When I was a little kid, I just delighted in the Christmas pageant. How it worked was this: one of the older kids read the Christmas story, while the other older kids went through the church and asked kids if they’d like to play a part. Then the kid got dressed right then and there and ran up and took his or her place in the Nativity scene. Of course, every little girl’s dream is to play the Virgin Mary, but there are many other good parts for girls, including angels and lambs. And truth be told, in a pinch, I would have played a Wise Man or a shepherd. For the baby Jesus. To me, the fun was in the surprise of not knowing if you would get picked, and then experiencing the thrill of getting picked.

Well, apparently the powers-that-be decided to do away with that thrill, and assign parts. I heard one reason was that parents were upset that children they dragged to church Sunday after Sunday didn’t get choice roles, while children who were just Christmas/Easter people were showing up and getting good parts. To this I say bah humbug, because imagine if you only went to church twice a year, and then one day you show up and a person says, here why don’t you do something? That would get me a lot more interested in a church, and perhaps persuade me to get my parents to bring me back, then showing up once a year and watching other kids do something without me.

But for whatever reason, I was not consulted on the decision, and I vowed to forever boycott the soul-sucking scene that was a pre-arranged Nativity play. Now years and years had gone by, and I decided to keep an open mind about it at this 4 pm service. I also decided to review the pageant for you, my dear readers.

Though I was not issued a press pass beforehand, I entered the room where the children were being assembled because I know people. There, I was threatened by Debbie that I better give this pageant a good review because she reads the blog and she knows my mother. Luckily, my journalistic integrity and objectivity is too great to be compromised by such threats.

My mother talked with another woman about her daughter’s smocked dress because at big premieres like this, it’s always important to find out what other people are wearing.

Then I was shown to my seat, which to tell the truth was only mediocre for a member of the working press. Small children sang songs, allegedly to get me into the Christmas spirit, but I did not find the songs very joyful. One song was about how all the little children should come to Bethlehem. On the one hand, that was not very inclusive because there were many adults there, and on the other hand, I don’t think small children should be wandering about the middle east on their own, for there is much violence in the area.

Then the service started. As usual with church services, there was a procession into the church, but because of the pageant, the characters processed also, wearing their costumes. I took the opportunity to note that the girl playing the Virgin Mary was wearing sparkling red Converse sneakers. Interesting choice. Following the Holy Family was an angel carrying a doll. This angel, instead of being filled with heavenly joy at carrying the Christ Child, spent the procession shooting dirty, dirty looks at the shepherd that was also accompanying the couple, perhaps because the shepherd was playing a little fast and loose with his staff.

Now, in my day, the Christmas pageant seemed to be read more or less directly from the Bible, and as source materials go, I think that’s a pretty good one. However, for this performance, the powers-that-be decided to go with an adaptation by one Jerome Berryman, who is an Episcopal priest who developed this entire Sunday School curriculum. Well, Godly Play wasn’t developed til after my time so I can’t vouch for its success in Sunday School. But I must tell you, this Christmas pageant was found lacking, script-wise, in this reviewer’s opinion.

The story at the heart of any Nativity scene is a simple and beautiful one. Yet Jerome Berryman, apparently never having seen the Charlie Brown Christmas special that celebrated the simplicity, decided to spice it up a little bit with flowery language and superfluous, speculative details. Berryman goes to great lengths to describe the town of Bethlehem, including a lot of information of animals. We are told that “donkeys chew their barley and broken straw while weary cows lean and rest at the end of the day. Sheep nearby are almost asleep. Doves coo in the rafters.” Then, after those lines, Berryman insists, “All is still and quiet in the little town.” BUT WHAT ABOUT THE DOVES COOING AND THE DONKEYS CHEWING ON WHATEVER THEY CAN GET THEIR PAWS ON, JEROME???? HOW CAN IT BE STILL AND QUIET IF THAT IS GOING ON????

I feel the narrator of the pageant was hindered by these lines. At one point, she was supposed to say, “They are Joseph and Mary from Nazareth!” but she really didn’t sell me on that exclamation mark, apparently because she knew that she had more crazy crap to plow through. Mary and Joseph decide to sleep in the stables, represented by a simple stage. To this reviewer, Joseph looked a little too smug for a guy whose wife was carrying a baby not his own and Mary looked a little too perky for a young woman about to give birth in a stable.

This play included an odd dramatization of childbirth. After the lines that tell us that Mary had already wrapped the baby up and put it into the “feed box” (I guess Berryman found “manger” too complicated a concept), an angel came up the aisle to deliver the baby to the couple. The angel, freed from the company of that crazy shepherd, was no less surly.

More and more children made their way to the scene in a midst of ridiculous lines. Animals were there; I thought one boy was playing a chicken but my brother told me later it was supposed to be a dove. “Shepherds watching their shadowy sheep” came, even though I’m not quite sure how the sheep were shadowy in the dark. The wise kings came, “following the wild star, the destiny they had never seen before, and they are following it.” That’s a real line. I didn’t change it at all. But it wasn’t my favorite description of the wise men, which was this: “Their restlessness rests at last.”

As I observed the children find their spots, I thought they looked a bit bored. They were playing roles they knew they were going to play for weeks, and if they were spontaneously picked, it’s possible they might have looked a little bit more freaked out, which I think is probably how most people were that night. It’s a more “Method” way of doing things.

But then something happened that warmed my heart a little bit and converted me on this concept ever so slightly (not Berryman’s script, just the concept). At the end of the play, the narrator says some psychobabble about how the children should bring their gifts of stars to the Christ Child. And then, there were these golden stars on sticks that were handed out to all the children in the congregation who wanted one. And all those children with their stars surrounding the Nativity scene was in fact very beautiful.

So, the Nativity play was, in some ways, like it used to be, because everyone got to participate by holding a star. And maybe it’s okay if you know beforehand whether you’ll play Mary or an angel or a wise man, so you don’t freak out too much over your part or worry you’ll be passed over. But all I know is that the Nativity play needs a new script, and I have verbal contracts with the children and youth directors as well as the priest to write a new one.

Sadly, I probably won’t ever see my script performed, as my family and I decided that the Christmas pageant was something to be experienced only every couple of years. It’s just far too loud in comparison to the later service, which is more dignified and elegant. Still, I am glad I went to this one, and I give the children and staff behind Nativity 2008 credit for overcoming the ridiculous script. Again, I should note it’s only the silly script I found ridiculous, not the actual biblical story of the event. Don’t mess with a winner is all I’m saying.