The Best Christmas Pageant Ever

Last night was our church Christmas party. The whole thing was a little surreal. It was originally my idea, but it didn’t turn out quite as planned. Since I am the branch music chairperson, a few months ago I realized I should probably plan a few special musical numbers for the church service the week before Christmas. My husband is in the branch presidency, so I asked him what the President had in mind. He responded that the President didn’t have anything in mind yet, so I should put something together and present it for his approval. Because our branch is small, and we don’t have a choir or a lot of extra time and resources after we barely manage to accomplish the essentials, I went online and got the simplest Christmas Sacrament Meeting Program I could find. It was just excerpts from the Christmas story in Luke interspersed with Sally DeFord hymn arrangements that I could find online and print for free. I wouldn’t have to translate anything into Italian, and the only thing hard about the music was the piano accompaniment, which I could do myself. We were set for a stress-free Christmas program. Except that I live in Italy.

When President saw the program, he approved it on the spot, as I expected. But he also did something I did not expect. He said that instead of doing it for Sacrament Meeting on Sunday, he wanted it performed the Saturday before. That way it could serve as the branch Christmas party too, since nobody had planned one yet. My heart sank a little, but it still seemed like everything could be fairly simple. Unfortunately, I am also in the Relief Society (the church women’s organization) presidency. I went to my meeting that month and mentioned the musical Christmas party. The rest of the presidency were delighted, and immediately began adding grandiose and complicated details. At its height, the uncontrollably ballooning planned activity included a gallery of local painters and woodcrafters, a Christmas play with several live animals and elaborate sets painted by a professional artist, a creche display, a complicated retelling of A Christmas Carol, a photography contest, and an appearance by Babbo Natale (Santa Claus), bearing chocolate-covered hazelnuts, regular chocolate, handmade gifts, or various other food and non-food items. There was much discussion about whether the part of baby Jesus should be played by the Primary President’s four-month-old or the premature baby who had been born the week before. I voted strongly for a doll.

You understand, this is not a large congregation in Utah or San Diego. Most people in our Branch have multiple callings, and we’re lucky if even the really essential things like sunday school lessons and important meetings actually happen on any given week. And the economic times have hit nearly everyone so hard that they’re working extra hours and spending a lot of time stressed over money matters, especially during the holidays. I knew that none of us had the time, resources, or emotional energy to actually carry out even a fraction of all these beautiful but impractical ideas. Luckily, I have spent a little time with Italians, and I know that they love to talk effusively, but all the talk doesn’t necessarily have to come to fruition for them to be happy. I managed to pare it down to the photography contest (which had already been more-or-less planned and frequently announced by the previous Relief Society presidency, and was otherwise going to need to be–heaven forbid–a separate Christmas activity) plus my original Christmas program, with the addition of a living nativity done by the primary children. Everyone assumed I was in charge, since I had provided the original idea, so I was determined to make sure it was something that actually sounded doable to me. Being the rain-on-the-party American, I was already contemplating the practical underpinnings of the plan, and considering how to accomplish it, not just how beautiful everything was going to be.

By the time the actual day dawned yesterday, I had invited two non-member friends, but in the end I don’t know that it was such a bad thing that neither one could make it. Although most of the branch was there and the children were running around in sheets and bathrobes for the half hour before it was supposed to start, nobody seemed in much of a hurry to sit down. The branch President had emailed Tony a few hours before it started, saying he had to work and would not be able to attend. That left Tony in charge of directing, except that he couldn’t very well start the meeting when everyone was out in the hall chatting and bustling. Twenty minutes after the time to start had passed, I finally decided I had to take matters into my own hands, or we were never getting to bed that night. I sent Tony out in the hall to round everyone up and tell them it was time to start. I sat down myself at the piano and started playing some soft Christmas music with lots of hard-to-hear flourishes in the upper register, which magically did reduce the noise level. After ten minutes of playing, I knew something must have happened to Tony, so I was forced to leave the piano and go in search of him. He informed me that someone had rushed out the front door to find someone else, and admonished him to not start without her. I said we should start anyway (we were now a half-hour late), and he agreed with relief.

We finally managed to get everyone seated, including the costumed primary children. After that, everything proceeded without a hitch. Well, mostly. The first musical number, a piano solo, still hadn’t shown up. Luckily, I had one up my sleeve just in case, and I played it myself. In fact, I was so nervous I began playing it before the narrator (who had been roped into also directing the meeting) had time to introduce the program. Tony came up behind me and whispered my mistake, so I turned it into just a little prelude, and continued the number after the narrator had finished his introduction. The narrator must have been nervous too, because he began reading his narration during my piano solo. Tony went up behind and whispered to him too, so he ended up reading a couple of passages twice, but it all came out right in the end.

The primary children were supposed to be sent up in groups between musical numbers (first Mary and Joseph, then the shepherds, etc.), but a few minutes into the program, the nursery leader panicked and started sending them all up at once. Tony rushed to the back of the room to stem the flow of primary children, so that only half of the angels came out early. In all the excitement, I had completely forgotten to inform the missionary who was leading the congregational singing that there was supposed to be a congregational hymn in the middle of the program. So after the primary president and I finished our violin/piano duet, I sent her to find him and tell him what the hymn was. But she found the wrong missionary, who bewilderedly came up to the front, thinking it was time for the men’s trio of Silent Night that he was supposed to participate in.

After he had been sent back to his seat and Tony had whispered to the narrator to announce the congregational hymn (didn’t I do a great job planning this whole thing?), the other missionary did eventually make it up to the front to lead the singing. Having gotten all their energy out before the program, the primary children were good as gold, and stood quietly at the front during the whole thing.

There had been some confusion about the three kings, since two of them ended up being out of town at the last minute. The kings were supposed to sing the Silent Night trio at the end. But somehow the two missionaries got asked to sing, while the young men (we only have two in the branch) were dressed up as kings in African and Moroccan attire, so we ended up with all of them. That wasn’t so bad, since none of them had much time to practice the singing, and one of the missionaries did point out that the Bible doesn’t actually specify a number of wise men, or even that they were kings. Either way, Tony, good sport that he is, made up the third (or in this case fifth) king, in a pink crown with matching cape and purple and pink tunic, accented by a large heart-shaped pink jeweled clasp, all donated by Axa.

Only a minor amount of hay was spilled from the manger, and somebody besides me brought a bunch of panettone by way of refreshments, and somebody else found a lot of orange drink and soda pop in the refrigerator left over from the last activity, so in the end it actually turned out to be quite a success. At least when we consider the purpose for which it was intended, which was to help us all feel closer together and think a little about the reason for Christmas. The Relief Society president summed it up perfectly. She said it was like a Christmas Eve play done with the family: simple, but beautiful because of its simplicity. Looking back on the elaborate Christmas programs in which I participated when we lived in San Diego, I couldn’t help feeling that mine this year was as far from them as humanity from Divinity. But isn’t that what Christmas is all about? The miracle of God condescending to not just come among us, but be one of us. And in doing so, to lift us all back to Him. So somehow, for me, even in all the chaos and unintended comedy, there was something transcendental about our little Christmas program. Many times during the weeks and hours leading up to it, I wondered why I had ever entertained this idea in the first place. But as I watched the branch, celebrating Christmas together like a family, I felt that my stressed-out, inept efforts had been both accepted and magnified. In the end, I’m glad it’s over, and that it only happens once a year. But I’m also glad we did it.