The (New) Best Christmas Pageant Ever

Everybody has their holiday traditions. One of ours is reading Barbara Robinson's The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. When I was a girl, we watched the movie (starring Loretta Swit) on an old filmstrip in the school cafeteria. I remember the countdown--5, 4, 3, 2 (there never was a 1)--the grainy picture, the sound delay, the feel of the cool laminated cafeteria tables, and the whipwhipwhip of the finished spool as the movie ended.

I remember "Hey! Unto you a child is born!" and the shepherds recoiling in fear of Gladys Herdman.

I was ten and I remember this more clearly than I remember most of yesterday.

That's the thing about traditions, isn't it, the way they stay in your consciousness even as an adult, the way the memories become layered, one upon another, year after year? The way hearing a story read aloud becomes watching a grainy filmstrip, becomes reading the book with a flashlight under the blankets, becomes reading the book to your own child, becomes hearing your own child read the book aloud--and it all mingles together with the sound of laughter as you recall how "the Herdmans were absolutely the worst kids in the history of the world."

This year my son is the star of his own Christmas pageant. By "star," I mean, of course, the villain: Herod (also known in our house as "Herod Herdman"). As the narrator says, "Every good story needs a villain," and he plays it well, stomping around and menacing the Magi, declaring his objective to "defeat this baby who challenges my throne!"

The kids had a lot of input into the pageant, which features a bodyguard donkey, a ninja camel, Kung Fu sheep (complete with a rendition of "Kung Fu Fighting," of course), and a Jedi Magus complete with lightsaber. ("These are not the astronomers you are looking for.") As an extra bonus, the angel Gabe is played by a dwarf.

There's something very real about these performances, the buoyancy and freshness of it all, that makes me think the Herdmans may just be outshone, perhaps for the first time since the book was published 39 years ago. In future, we may be referring to Robinson's book as "The Second Best Christmas Pageant Ever."