In my “spare time” as a working mother with two young boys, I decided to once again produce the Nativity pageant at our local parish. The reenactment of the first Christmas is performed during the 4 p.m. Mass on Christmas Eve and notoriously draws a standing-room-only crowd. The script has not changed in 20 years, and it is a safe bet the costumes haven’t been washed in at least that long, although we did do a slight upgrade last year and purchased new halos and wings for all of the angels.
While it is time-consuming to recruit and corral the children, schedule practices, negotiate with all the girls who want to be Mary and assign ill-fitting costumes to each child, I have come to love all of the imperfections of our annual parish play. I don’t imagine angels crying and running back to loving parents’ arms on that very first Christmas, or sheep making funny faces while being too shy to “baa,” but it’s the imperfections in our retelling of the very human story of Christ’s birth that makes our play so perfect.
At a recent play practice, I asked the 31 participants whom they thought was responsible for the first reenactment of Christmas. One child pointed at me and yelled, “You!” After I and all the other parents laughed, I asked where they thought the first Nativity scene took place. One person yelled out “Bethlehem” and another blurted, “Here!” While neither answer was correct, I was struck that they thought it was in our hometown.
In fact, St. Francis of Assisi first recreated Jesus’ birth in 1223 in Greccio, Italy. “Today the tradition of setting up a still-life Christmas creche in our homes and churches is so commonplace that we can easily overlook the raucous origins of the tradition 800 years ago,” Dan Horan, O.F.M., a professor and the director of the Center for Spirituality at Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Ind., told me. “That first celebration of the Christmas creche took place in a literal manger with live animals, dirty hay and cold weather. Leading the first-ever Nativity scene was St. Francis’ way to make Jesus’ birth real.”
At my parish, and so many around the world, we are doing the very same thing—trying to make Christ real for each of us—sheep that don’t baa on cue and all.
I want the children—and parents—to feel welcomed and a part of our larger faith community. These children are the future of the church, so creating a hospitable environment that gives everyone exposure to the powerful story of the Nativity is an abiding priority for me. If, through the annual pageant, our children and their families can see their friends and other families praying and celebrating together, the power of our faith in community has the potential to override the challenges that many of us may feel with the institutional church. What a grace it is if people come back to our pews simply because they look forward to the pageant, with all its (literal and figurative) hiccups, and that participation brings them closer to God. What a gift!
My Christmas wish—or present to each pageant participant—is that by participating in the Nativity they will each find their way to Bethlehem through Jesus’ light. That light shines through in prayer, faith and love for all of the wonderful gifts Jesus has given us and continues to bestow on us.
