The Best Christmas Pageant Ever

If you are around my age, you may remember this as a television show that came on around the holidays staring Loretta Swift (of MASH fame.) We rediscovered it as an audio tape by Barbara Robinson.

It tells the story from a little girl's perspective recalling a very extraordinary Christmas Pageant. Her mother is put in charge of the pageant that is the same every year after the normal director breaks her leg.

This year, however, the Herdman's have decided to participate. The Herdman's are a family of six horrible children. They set fire to things, smoke cigars (even the girls), cheat, lie, steal and blackmail kids about their weight. They come to church after having been told that refreshments are always served, a lie from the narrator's little brother.

They bully the other kids into all of the main roles. They have never heard the story before and are interested in all the details of the Nativity. Hearing it for the first time, they see things and question things in a way that brings the story alive to the narrator.

The night of the pageant is far from a disaster. Though Mary burps the baby and the wise men decide to give their own ham from their charity Christmas basket in lieu of the bottles of bath salts usually used, the play is somehow more this year, somehow more how it should be every year.

This is a funny, sweet and poignant tale of what Christmas means. I recommend it to children young and old. It will refocus your attention on the first Christmas and the characters in a heart warming way.

Hearing the story of the Best Christmas Pageant Ever will remind you what Christmas is all about. It will remind you that "Hey, HEY! Unto you a child is born!"