Not Your Ordinary Christmas Tale



The Christmas Pageant:
A tradition that never grows old.

            This morning, near the end of our church’s Advent Celebration service, children paraded down the aisle, dressed in the familiar attire of shepherds, wise men, and angels. The pint-sized actors gathered around a manger, where “Mary” gently tended the baby Jesus and “Joseph” helped her keep watch over him.

            Watching that timeless scene unfold, I was reminded of my very favorite Christmas story, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson. First published in 1972, the story probably wouldn’t clear all of today's “politically-correct” hurdles as there is something in it to offend just about everyone at least once.  There are church gossips and busybodies, there are schoolyard name-calling and bullying. A good case could be made that it contains child abuse and even—heaven forbid!—cruelty toward a cat.  

You can see from my copy
of this book it is well read.

            But, for me, this is the quintessential Christmas story (besides, of course, the original one). No matter how many times I read this little book or see the play, I laugh out loud at the antics of the  incorrigible Herdmans, a ragtag collection of siblings who terrorize an entire town and threaten to hijack the annual Christmas pageant. But always by the end of the story, I’m in tears. When I read about Imogene Herdman crying as she performs her role as Mary, I think that perhaps no other “actress” has ever taken the assignment so much to heart. And when Gladys Herdman “with her skinny legs and dirty sneakers sticking out from under her robe” yells “Hey! Unto you a child is born,” she embodies the excitement that must have filled the first heralds of that message.

            Yes, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever isn’t your typical, reverent Christmas story. But I think it’s one of the best because it deals with an imperfect world and the  imperfect people who inhabit it. Ultimately, it is the story of transformation and redemption. And, after all, isn’t that what Christmas is about?

            Have a favorite Christmas story you’d like to recommend?