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NATIVITY PLAYS

Good morning.  A friend of mine who was the head teacher of a primary school once gave me an insider’s guide to the casting of a nativity play.  You want a quiet biddable child to play Mary because she has to sit still for so long and say very little; you must be confident that the innkeeper will stick to the script and turn Mary and Joseph away - not say there’s plenty of room at the inn; and never cast the naughty boys as shepherds, because you can cause a lot of havoc with a couple of walking sticks.

But in my experience it’s the parents who behave worse than the children.  I’ve heard of fathers who won’t take time off work to see their child’s nativity play unless they were playing Mary or Joseph.  And I remember feeling quite slighted on my younger son’s behalf when he was cast as a non-speaking sheep.  I don’t think he ever made it to a shepherd or a wise man.  Of course he didn’t care; but I did. 

With parents behaving worse than their children and given that we live in a pretty secular society, you might think that the nativity play would be on the way out.  In fact that’s exactly what journalists suggested a couple of weeks ago when they reported on a recent survey of school nativities.  They said that only a third of schools would stage a traditional play.  Most would have an updated one with new music and extra characters (but only one in eight Christmas shows would have no mention of religion at all).  So the majority of children at primary school will not only hear the Christmas story, but be part of it.

A Roman Catholic priest once said that he’d rather his congregation missed mass than the school nativity play.  He explained why.  Because it’s a story of unconditional love and it can be a profound experience: one which - no matter how often you watch it or how cynical you are - never fails to move you. 

Lord, the story of Jesus’ birth is so familiar to us - maybe too familiar.  This Christmas may we learn to think more like young children and hear this story as if for the first time.  Amen.