It's that time of year again, the Christmas Pageant! If somebody just says the word "pageant," a shiver goes up my spine. I tend to associate pageants with a lot of pandemonium, and this year's A Not So Silent Night was no different. Putting on a play with twenty-six LITTLE kids and just a few hours of rehearsal time is a little zany no matter what the circumstances. The woman who took this on is a saint, there really is no other word for it, except maybe lunatic. But then, there is the magic part of the pageant phenomena that I tend to forget until it teaches me the same old lesson once again. This is that no matter how crazy everything is, the kids always manage to pull it off in the end. This year was no different.
And so this morning we had the stable dog (?) and a member of the angel chorus join in the telling of the good news about the baby's birth. We sang familiar carols and laughed at the corny jokes in the script. Jos and I raced to the potty halfway through the play and almost made it there in time. We lit four of the candles in the advent wreath and quietly hoped that none of the kids would accidentally catch on fire. We even ran out of bulletins. We heard about a man in our congregation who asked hospice to leave his home when he decided not to let cancer take him down quite yet, and then we prayed for this man.

I really love christmas pageants.