Author Barbara Robinson’s popular novel, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, begins: “The Herdmans were absolutely the worst kids in the history of the world. They lied and stole and smoked cigars (even the girls) and talked dirty and hit little kids and cussed their teachers and took the name of the Lord in vain and set fire to Fred Shoemaker’s old broken-down tool house.”
Set in a small, provincial community where even the most infinitesimal detail of one’s life is subject to the scrutiny of the often-quixotic townsfolk, the six obstreperous Herdman children — Imogene, Ralph, Claude, Leroy, Ollie and Gladys — are nothing short of taboo.
J. Basil Dannebohm
Then one day, the rag-tag group of miscreants shows up at church for Sunday school and find themselves intrigued by the announcement that casting for the annual Christmas pageant is to commence. The roles of Mary, Joseph, the Magi and the Angel of the Lord were typically played by the same students year after year — that is, of course, until the Herdmans decide they want to play the parts. Not a single student dares to raise their hand in an expression of interest to portray one of the pageant’s lead characters, knowing that doing so might result in some form of Imogene’s much-feared wrath.
Suffice it to say that a gaggle of pearl-clutching parents are mortified by the news that the Herdman children are slated to lead the pageant, which has been an annual tradition in the community for decades. Such a catastrophe, they know, would have been avoided had the longtime director not suffered an injury, leaving the production’s fate to an inexperienced mother from the periphery of popular social circles.
I’m not going to give a sesquipedalian outline of the entirety of the story. If you’ve not yet read the book or seen the film, I suspect you can imagine that hijinks and uncertainty follow as the children, led by the unorthodox new cast members and an inexperienced director, set forth to pull off the highly anticipated, albeit dreaded, production.
One common scene throughout the story is a concerned Beth Bradley, the first-person narrator, frequently asking her mother, the newly appointed director, how things will unfold. The answer remains the same: “I don’t know.”
Although she doen’t know, Grace Bradley remains hopeful that her inaugural production will go down in history as the Best Christmas Pageant Ever. In the end, it is indeed a success. For their part, the townsfolk discover that while they knew the Herdman children, they didn’t truly understand them.
“Knowing is easy, understanding is hard.”
Theoretical physicist Richard Feynman once observed, “Knowing is easy, understanding is hard.”
More often than not, we tend to think we “know” an individual, a family, a group of people — but we rarely take the time to authentically “understand” them. Content in our assumptions, we are satisfied with the easy work of labeling and carrying on. Understanding is indeed hard. Often it makes us uncomfortable, even vulnerable. Generally, it challenges our long-held beliefs and perspectives. Thus, we remain in our clouds of unknowing and our bubbles of social coddling.
The story of the Nativity itself is largely known, although somewhat misunderstood. Many of us are content with our fairy tale notions of a gentle manger, a dainty Mary and a picturesque porcelain silent night. To understand the story, however, is to realize the newborn Savior represented “the least of these” from the very moment he took his first breath.
Indeed, Emmanuel was an olive skinned, persecuted, known but largely misunderstood refugee. His mother was hopeful, yet uncertain, of how all that would soon come to pass was going to play out in his life. To genuinely embrace the authentic Nativity isn’t easy. It requires us to set aside that which makes us comfortable and to realize much of what the holy family faced during the infancy of the Christ Child is still endured today by people we would rather not have to think about during “the most wonderful time of the year.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer once raised the question, “Who will celebrate Christmas correctly? Whoever finally lays down all power, all honor, all reputation, all vanity, all arrogance, all individualism beside the manger.”
Like the Nativity story, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever should be revisited annually. To celebrate the holiday season without understanding what it truly represents is easy but disingenuous. Such superficial pageantry is the antithesis of everything that came to pass on that most holy night.
J. Basil Dannebohm is a writer, speaker, consultant, former legislator and intelligencer. His website is www.dannebohm.com. He writes from the Washington, D.C., metro in the Commonwealth of Virginia.