The sheep were not well behaved. This was the report from my third-grade shepherd following his first rehearsal for our parish Christmas pageant. I reminded him that perhaps, as a shepherd (and a slightly older child), he might take on some responsibility for keeping the fuzzy first graders in line. But my son argued that he had a lot of catching up to do with Teddy and Frankie, his teammates from Little League fall baseball, who also happened to be shepherds; plus one of the three Anthonys from another baseball team was there, too.
My son had gone into the pageant with some hesitance, but the rehearsals took place at the same time as my daughters’ dance classes, so he decided being dropped off at the church was preferable to his typical Tuesday routine of doing math homework in the lobby of the dance studio while asking repeatedly if it was time to go home yet.
When I dropped him off for the first of three rehearsals, we passed a girl crying in front of a sheet of paper taped to a banister, which held the list of assigned roles. The girl’s mother was trying to comfort her with the exceedingly logical but thus far ineffective response of: “You said that’s what you wanted to be! We asked you three times!”
The casting of Christmas pageant roles has often caused great angst, and the drama and politics of the process is enshrined in Barbara Robinson’s 1972 children’s novel, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, which was made into a film this year. In it, the six rowdy, troublemaking children of the Herdman family are cast in the main roles of the Nativity play, much to the chagrin of their peers, and in fact, most of the adults.
“There are no small parts, only small actors,” one adult reminds the rest of the children, although one argues back that “you could have a Christmas pageant without any baby angels, but you couldn’t have one without Mary.”
I have fond memories of reading Robinson’s book as a child, so I was a bit surprised when I opened it to read to my children this year and found myself cringing at the very first line: “The Herdmans were the worst kids in the world.” It’s not a label that I want my kids to use for others—or be inspired to competitively seek.
But the book is told from the perspective of a young girl, and to her the Herdmans’ habits— including smoking cigars, committing arson and bonking other children on the head—should disqualify them from playing Mary and Joseph, et al. But by the end, it is precisely their imperfections that make the title of the book ring true. One of the Herdmans tries to burp the baby Jesus, two of them bring the baby a ham instead of scented oil. Overcome by the experience, the Herdmans playing Mary and Joseph stand frozen on stage; and Imogene Herdman, who is playing Mary, begins to cry from the beauty of it all.
The young narrator reflects: “It suddenly occurred to me that this was just the way it must have been for the real Holy Family, stuck away in a barn by people who didn’t much care what happened to them.” It is the Herdmans’ authenticity that captures everyone’s attention and channels the message at the heart of the Gospel.
You can be “the worst kid in the world” and still be the face of Christ.
•••
At the second of my son’s pageant rehearsals, Father begins the narration. “In those days Emperor Augustus gave orders for the names of all the people to be listed.” While he speaks, the girl playing Mary calmly walks up the church’s main aisle and the boy playing Joseph appears to be trying to do the Griddy.
When they reach the front of the church, someone claps two blocks together to make the sound of knocking on an innkeeper’s door. Later, a girl wearing a sweater featuring a dog wearing its own Christmas sweater throws her arms out as an angel making a proclamation might do, and a girl in gold boots carries a gold cardboard star on a stick as tall as she is and guides the wise men to the front of the church.
I heard that our parish had to order extra costumes to accommodate the number of baby angels who wanted to participate in the pageant. The pews in the front of the church reflect this abundance and are marked with laminated signs with labels like “reserved for angels” and “reserved for kings and innkeepers.”
There are so many small parts, but the willingness to include everyone speaks volumes: You are part of this story, which continues to unfold today. Even the least of us can contribute to the kingdom of God. Look at the baby whose birth we are celebrating: God can do so much good with things that the world overlooks.
Ricky Manolo, C.S.P., tells me that his own roles as a Paulist priest, composer and liturgist grew in part from his involvement in his parish productions. He recalls that, as an Asian American child growing up in a mostly white suburb in New Jersey, he never felt he could be cast in many of the main roles of pageants or passion plays, but he developed his production and musical skills in order to remain involved.
“I felt like I was participating through my own gifts,” he recalls. “That’s the beauty of these productions, they allow these various gifts through music or set design or costumes. And I think I saw that as an opportunity for the gifts of a community to come forward.”
Father Manolo expressed gratitude that there is more multicultural casting at parish pageants these days and added the importance of having many points of connection for a diverse faith community. He argues that events like pageants are “complementary to liturgy” because “parish life is not just about the Mass but also what goes on around it, before and after. Any parish event may become a place where interculturality happens, maybe potlucks or a Christmas bazaar. We get a glimpse at the larger ecclesial reality.”
•••
Christmas pageants are inherently unpredictable. When I was a child, one year the third-grade teacher who raised llamas brought two of them to the church for the Nativity play, and the suspense over whether they would use the aisle as a kind of llama litter box was almost too much for most of us kids to handle.
Another year, I was the star. Literally. My job was to pop up from behind the altar at my appointed time. I had decided that, as the star, I should have a “fancy” hairstyle and had somehow convinced my mother to put my hair in old-fashioned foam rollers before I’d gone to bed the night before. I dreamed of Shirley Temple curls, but I woke up looking like Cher from “Moonstruck.” The potential fashion crisis was solved, however, by the design of the costume, which consisted of a huge piece of posterboard covered with gold-foil wrapping paper (undoubtedly bought through a Catholic school fundraiser) with a large oval cut in the center. Only my smiling face was visible as I took my place.
I think of this role as I sit at the second rehearsal for my son and watch a woman attempt to herd the angels onto the altar, six of whom are holding sticks with posters featuring sparkly red, silver and blue stars and each with one word of the phrase “Glory to God in the highest.”
“Speaking shepherds, go get a staff,” the pageant director calls out to the boys lucky enough to have lines in the production. As soon as the children grab the wooden crooks they transform them into weapons, holding them horizontally or high above their heads. Eventually, one speaking shepherd hits another in the teeth.
At one point Joseph’s enthusiasm knocks a wooden sawhorse-turned-donkey to the floor and it echoes with a clatter. The donkey is on wheels, and Mary is supposed to sit on it while Joseph pulls it with a rope to take her to Bethlehem.
“Donkey down!” shouts a shepherd.
“This donkey is pretty durable; it’s Mary I’m worried about,” said the pageant director.
The speaking shepherds practice their lines:
Shepherd one: “We saw an Angel.”
Shepherd two: “The Angel said that Christ our Savior was born.”
Shepherd three: “We saw a whole bunch of angels.”
“Let’s give this one our best shot,” Father says, as the children launch into singing, “O come let us adore him,” raising the volume each time, until they are practically screaming, and the song becomes the kind of offer you can’t refuse.
•••
Perhaps one of the most famous Christmas pageants did not take place in a church at all, but on the animated stage of the 1965 movie, “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” Watching this movie was a yearly tradition in his family, says Father Manolo, and it was through Charlie Brown, and Linus’s speech about the true meaning of Christmas, that he first was introduced to the concept of a Christmas pageant.
“I remember watching that as a child and thinking, How do you look beyond something and see the deeper meaning?”Linus and our liturgy are asking a similar question, and the words of our Christmas and Advent Masses point us to an answer, says Father Manolo: “While the cute baby in the crib is relevant, it’s about more than a historical birth. The liturgy points us to the incarnation, the word made flesh and God coming as one like us into the world. And it’s paschal, and it is the beginning of our salvation.”
And directing us to a deeper message is the point of any of the many theatrical ways of showing devotion, Father Manolo says, be it a Christmas pageant, Las Posadas or the living Stations of the Cross. He warns: “If we just have pageants or passion plays, but no opportunities either through homilies or catechesis that invite us to the deeper meaning, then we are doing them in vain. If there’s good catechesis and good preaching and good music, then it clicks, and it brings us together and takes us from what we see on TV to the Nativity set at home to the pageant to a deeper understanding of what our Christian faith and the paschal mystery are all about.”
I often hear debates about whether the Christmas pageant should be held before, during or after Mass, or whether it should be its own event. I’m partial to holding the pageant in the place of the Gospel, a practice that feels Ignatian to me. If you want to contemplate the Word of God made flesh, then it might help to put yourself in the literal midst of the story, and then to follow it with the Eucharistic rite, which reminds us who this child becomes, the full arc of his life and death and resurrection.
•••
On the day of our parish Christmas pageant, my son slides into his brown polyester robe and headwrap and ties the obligatory white rope around his waist and sits beside his friends and their flock. There is perhaps no better example of joyful anticipation than a group of third-grade shepherds waiting for their cue. When the big moment arrives, he files out of his reserved pew and falls to his knees and hides his face, just as a fearful shepherd might. At least I’m pretty sure that is what he does, for the church lacks stadium seating, and as soon as he reaches the altar steps he is largely out of view, and what little we can see of his head is virtually indistinguishable from the covered heads of his fellow shepherds.
As a parent hoping to capture a photo of my son in action, it is mildly frustrating that he disappears, but I am so proud of him for participating, and for committing to his role with gusto. It makes me hopeful that the experience might help him to connect to the heart of the Gospel. And what better way to celebrate Christmas than to have faith in things unseen, to find hope in a child.
