A Dog in the Manger and Other Christmas Stories by Jim Simons

Author:Jim Simons
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2012-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

St. Michael

This is a story that is completely explainable, but when it’s told it may also be unbelievable. As I look back on the events of that Christmas Eve, all of it makes sense. I mean, I don’t think there really was anything supernatural but . . .

Let me start at the beginning and the beginning is at the church. My wife, Sarah, is part of the Christian Education Committee at St. Mary’s and that group is charged with, among other items, the annual Christmas pageant. This has always been performed by the children. I’m sure you’ve seen one before. A lot of little children dressed in bedsheets, which, depending on how they get wrapped, means they are either angels or shepherds—the shepherds also being distinguished by the towels wrapped around their heads with yarn. The older children play the characters with speaking parts: Mary, Joseph, the innkeeper, the angels. The kids work hard at memorizing their lines and most of them do a pretty good job. It’s hard to miss with kids, although last year’s pageant did border on disaster. It has been referred to as the “Christmas Pageant from Hell.”

The MacNamara twins, age eight, were part of the heavenly host, but apparently against their will. During the Gloria in Excelsis they got into a shoving match that resulted in little Marion Kelly getting pushed into the manger, sending baby Jesus, played by a Cabbage Patch Kid, sliding across the sanctuary floor. At that moment Amber Geringer, who was playing Mary and who, unbeknownst to anyone, was in the early stages of a forty-eight-hour flu, got sick on Joseph. Joseph screamed, sending twelve tiny preschool angels flying down the aisles in search of their parents. One of them tripped over an electric cord, causing a six-foot stand of stage lights to come crashing down. This, of course, dispersed the rest of the cast and brought the entire production to a swift conclusion.

After a short break to clean up, make sure no one was hurt, and get everyone settled, Father Elston said that that would be a tough act to follow but he would try. And with a mixture of emotions we had Communion, sang “Silent Night,” and all went home to await with fear and trepidation next year’s pageant.

Father Elston approached the whole situation with a fair amount of humor, but he did let the Christian Education Committee know that something different had to happen next year—otherwise, he said, they might be sued for risking a catastrophe. The committee complied with a novel idea.

My wife, Sarah, came home from the October meeting and made the announcement. This year the pageant would be done by the adults.

“Adults?” I said somewhat incredulously. “Do you really think that you can get a group of adults to dress up and act all of that out?”

“Michael,” she said with that tone that let me know that a little more support on my part would be greatly appreciated, “this is a wonderful idea. We can show the children that Christmas is for adults too and that the pageant is important.

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