"The Best Christmas Pageant Ever!"

We went into town last night to the little theatre to see their holiday production of "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever!" Wonderful story... I read the book years ago.... about a grammar-school class getting together to put on a pageant for Christmas. Cute, cute story..... and the kids who were in last night's play were just wonderful. The perfect play for a small town because the story itself is very small-townish.

We went with J&G, and J&J....... going to dinner in town before the play, then back to the same cafe for dessert after the play........ then going to one of the main squares in town to look at the Christmas light displays. The town also had their annual Christmas parade before the play started.... J&J went to that while J&G and the two of us went for dinner. My husband and I had gone to the parade the first year we moved here..... it was sort of unorganized and they had no music playing (how can you have a parade without music?!) so we weren't that impressed.

This year's parade, however...... J&J said it was more organized.... more music...... more lighted floats. All of that means a better parade. So next year's plan..... go into town to see the parade, then go out for dinner.... and hopefully see whatever Christmas play they're showing at the town's theatre on another night instead of on the parade night.

By the end of that play last night, many people in the audience were dabbing at their eyes with tissues...... not that the play was sad, but I think the innocence of it all just touched everyone. I sat there watching those kids in the play and remembering all the Christmas plays we had to do when I was in Catholic grammar school. Every year there was a different play... and every year, every kid in all of the classes would moan and groan because we had to learn words to the songs, or (horror of horrors!) we would be chosen for one of the main roles. (In Catholic schools of the 1950s and 1960s, the nuns didn't ask for volunteers-- they just stood in front of the classes and picked kids for the parts.)

I got picked in the 5th grade...... I was the 'new girl' that year because we had moved there in August and the 5th grade was my first year in that school...... the nun in charge of the play went to each of the classrooms looking for students for the play. Her name was Sister Genevieve.... she picked me to be the girl who gets sick and can't go to the Christmas pageant, so she spends the entire time on stage in bed, in pajamas, and 'dreams' of what she's missing by being sick. I can still remember her coming into the 5th grade classroom... she stood there looking at all of us, and then she said "I'll take the new girl." I had no choice. Out the door I went with Sister Genevieve and she gave me the typed pages with my lines on it. She told me to memorize the pages, and be at the first rehearsal promptly after school the next day. The last thing I wanted to do was be in bed in my pajamas on a stage in front of all the kids in school and their parents. Plus, for weeks after that, the kids in my class were calling me The New Girl instead of my name.

My mother bought me new pajamas with a Christmas design on them... plus new slippers and a new bathrobe. (She bought those things every Christmas for my sister and I, but she gave them to me early, a few days before the play.) Even the thought of getting Christmas gifts before Christmas morning didn't get me excited about being in that play. But I did it..... I didn't have a choice... I memorized the lines.... my mother was in the audience the first night.... my father and my Aunt Dolly were in the audience the second night..... friends and neighbors were there.... and parents of the kids in my class. And there I was.... up on that stage in white pajamas with little red reindeer prancing all over them. The rest of 5th grade was all down-hill after that.

But last night.... the play was nostalgic and fun and comforting and we all enjoyed it...... we laughed over hot chocolate and peach cobbler.... we walked on quiet streets in our tiny 'downtown' squares and looked up at the thousands of white lights that out-lined all of the shops and the courthouse and the trees. Simple, beautiful, tiny white lights...... in a simply, beautiful, tiny little town....... J was taking pictures of the lighted trees..... we didn't want the night to end.

Looking up at the old-fashioned courthouse and the town square........ it made me forget about the wildlife encounters with snakes and raccoons, and the creepy crawly scorpions and steroid-laced spiders, and the crying cows and shotguns exploding in the woods when hunting season begins.

The Christmas truth is that you can say what you want about all the conveniences of city-life, but there's not much that can top living in a one-hundred-year-old house in a nearly-200-year-old town that thrives on its 1950's sense of propriety in the Texas Hill Country.