Christmas Pageant Fun from Hollyhill

When I married, I started going to the little church where I’m still a member. They always had the children put on a Christmas play. My kids took part when they got old enough to be shepherds, wise men, or angels. The performances were always fun since you never knew what might happen next with a bunch of youngsters. Usually the kids just acted out the Christmas story and sang the appropriate carols, sometimes with the help of the audience. A few times, the pastor or one of the Sunday school teachers tried to do a different program, but we always came back to the traditional manger scene. I used my experiences along with some imagination to have a Christmas play scene in my third Hollyhill book, Summer of Joy.  A reader once complained that nearly the whole book takes place in the wintertime so she couldn’t understand the title saying summer. But summer was coming.

Anyway, as a special Christmas post, I’m sharing that scene or at least parts of it. I hope you’ll enjoy the Christmas Pageant at Holly County’s Mount Pleasant Church. If you’ve read the Hollyhill stories you’ll recognize some of the participants. If not, maybe you would enjoy getting to know them better in my Hollyhill books, Scent of Lilacs, Orchard of Hope and Summer of Joy. The scene is seen through the eyes of David, Jocie’s father and the pastor of Mount Pleasant Church, who is watching from the pews as the kids perform.

The church was nearly full. A children’s Christmas program always brought the people in. Up front Miss Sally and Lela Martin shooed three shepherds in bathrobes out from behind the white sheets that served as stage curtains. The little boys peeked out from under their towel head wraps and headed toward the red construction paper flames sticking up out of a circle of sticks in front of the podium. The pulpit had been moved to make room for the hill where the shepherds were keeping watch over their flocks.

On the other side of the stage, Dorothy McDermott and Myra Hearndon pushed four little sheep out into the limelight. They crawled toward the shepherds slowly to keep from losing their cotton ball fleeces and ears. Two of the sheep – the Hearndon twins, at two and a half – had been prone to wander from the flock in practices. When their mother worried about them wandering down the aisles during the actual play or crawling under the pews or who knew where, Miss Sally said that was why there were shepherds. To keep their sheep from wandering. And because those shepherds were out on that hill that night doing their job and keeping their sheep safe, they were blessed.

Of course the little shepherds tripping on their bathrobes and stumbling over their wooden staffs toward the fire weren’t much older than the little lambs. Two of the little shepherds made it to the fire and sat down without a glance at the sheep milling around behind them. The other little shepherd, Jeremy, shoved at the towel that had slipped down over his eyes and fell right over top of Eli Hearndon who was doing some kind of spinning sheep moves in the middle of the aisle with a full chorus of baas. Jeremy fell into the campfire. He jumped back as though the construction paper flames were real, and the towel fell off his head. The other two shepherds tried to help him put it back on, because it was a well-known fact that nobody could be a shepherd without a towel on his head.

Meanwhile, the sheep took off crawling up the center aisle. Chad, one of the little shepherds, looked around at the escaping sheep, put his hands on his hips, and announced, “I told Miss Sally we should’ve had cows instead of sheep.”

That brought a roar of laughter while Jocie went after the sheep and herded them back to the front and Miss Sally got the shepherds situated around the fire again.

The children started singing “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear.” As they sang the last words, three little angels in tinsel halos stepped out from behind the curtains. One of them, Mollie, began proclaiming the Good News. “Fear not: for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.” She stopped to swallow and for a minute it looked as if she might have forgotten the good tidings.

Cassidy, one of the other angels, leaned over close to her and loudly whispered, “Jesus. Tell them about baby Jesus getting born.”

Mollie picked up the angelic message. “For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you. Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.”

Then the multitude of the three angels, the singers in the front pew, and the mothers behind the curtain said, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.” For a minute even the sheep stayed still as the angels held out their hands to sprinkle blessings down on the shepherds before they disappeared behind the curtains again.

Chad, the shepherd who had wished for cows earlier, stood up and said, “Wow! We’ve got to go see this. God told us to.” He turned to look at the sheep. “Come on, sheep. You can’t stay out here by yourselves. You’ll have to go too.”

Not exactly the way it was written or how they’d practiced, but it worked. Chad the shepherd didn’t try to steal any more scenes as he and his fellow shepherds and the sheep settled down to worship the baby Jesus as the Wise Men brought in their gifts and laid them before the baby in the manger. Behind the curtain, Myra Hearndon started singing “What Child is This?” What a blessing she and her family had turned out to be to the congregation. Proof that the Lord answered prayers his people didn’t even know to pray.

So many prayers. So many blessed answers. David stepped forward on the last line of the song to lead the congregation in prayer before they went to the basement where one of the men was going to play Santa Claus and hand out sacks of candy to the children.

That’s an old fashioned country church Christmas pageant. While I don’t remember a little shepherd ever saying he wished for cows instead of sheep, I thought it could happen. And I do remember plenty of boys and girls struggling with those towel head wraps and tinsel halos, or tripping on their dads’ bathrobes wise men outfits.

Have you ever been part of a Christmas pageant as one of the actors or directors? Watched one at your church?

(The photo is from a pageant at my little churc quite a few years ago.)