As I sat through my 7-year-old’s recent winter concert I found myself pondering the fact that when the holiday season rolls around, people seem to lose all grasp of reality, especially when there are kids and performances involved. Of all the strange memories one has of their childhood, I’d be willing to bet at least one of them involved some sort of Christmas performance. Maybe it was your school play, maybe it was your church’s nativity, maybe it was something else.
But chances are, at least once during your childhood a normally rational adult decided they needed a blockbuster concept for the holiday showcase, and something crazy happened. I have a friend who told me one year her church’s nativity featured a laser show instead of the star of Bethlehem. Another friend from the Northeast said one year their Christmas play was held outside in subzero temperatures and the fifth grade choir was asked to ski up the center aisle of seats. There were a few falls, lots of lost voices and several parents got frostbite. Happy holidays! Enjoy your trip to the emergency room!
I attended private school, which meant the crazy could happen on a much grander scale. There isn’t space to write about all the strange memories my siblings and I share, but if there is one that sticks out in memory it would be the holiday pageant of 1986. It had it all — grand production values (we performed it in the main auditorium of the Luther Burbank Center), a third-wall breaking concept of a play within a play, non-politically correct casting, a gender bending Santa Claus and portions in several different languages.
It began with a few eighth grade girls, dressed awkwardly in their parents’ business suits to signify they were grown ups, strolling up the center aisle as the house lights came up, reminiscing about how awesome it was to have attended our school, and how the most memorable thing of all was the grand holiday pageant of 1986.
They mentioned a few upcoming acts, foreshadowing the excitement to come, then summoning their best 13-year-old Method acting skills, turned and pointed up the aisle, squinting dramatically while saying, “It feels like just yesterday. I can almost … see it … NOW,” at which point the theater was plunged into darkness as a troop of minstrels, played by the third grade came dancing up the aisle.
The inner ring of this Inferno was a play about — why not — the Christmas just following the marriage of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. At the time, it didn’t strike me that a classmate who was rather, ahem, curvy was cast as the famously not-tiny Victoria. But she was a dead ringer in her costume — a bit of non-PC selection that I doubt would fly today. One of our male classmates who could speak German was cast as Albert and he performed his entire role in German, despite the fact that likely the only people in the whole place who could understand a single word were his parents.
I had a triple role. I was as a young noblewoman who as a gift to the Queen was to recite a poem by her majesty’s favorite poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson. That’s not so bad, I’m sure you’re saying, except that I was required to do it in an authentic accent. So for a good three weeks, instead of actual schoolwork I sat in the director/head master’s office attempting to be British. “Ring out wild bells to the wild sky …” … “No! Again!” Over and over. 30 years later I can still recite the damn thing and I blame a lifetime of poor performance in math to all the class time I missed.
When I finished my performance, the queen was supposed to wipe away a tear, a sign of favor, but I always suspected it was my accent making her cry.
My second role was a peasant girl, who with my fellow villagers (aka the other eighth grade girls) danced for the king’s pleasure. That’s exactly how it was put to us too, by the way. Nothing too creepy there. Then again, none of us were particularly gifted dancers — more lunging than sashaying and one of us tripped over our may pole ribbon — so I doubt there much pleasurable about it. (Yes, we were dancing around a may pole in December. No, I don’t know why.)
Finally, because I was the tallest person in the entire school, I got to play Pere Noel, the French version of Santa Claus, who is well known to be very tall and thin (probably from al the wine and cigarettes). During a scene change my long hair was shoved up into a white wig, a beard was slapped on my face and a red robe was tossed over me before I was shoved back out with a sack of toys over my back.
In French, I then got to tell everyone how great they were and how many awesome presents I was delivering. Pere Noel usually travels with a donkey named Gui (or Mistletoe), and he puts gifts in shoes (because who doesn’t want presents that smell like feet?) and kids leave Gui a special snack. At one point, there had been a very serious plan to have me lead an actual donkey on stage with me, but blessedly a suitable creature could not be found.
I say blessedly because the wider world of Christmas productions tends to have a very poor track record when it comes to live animals. It often seems like a fun idea to have live animals at your local nativity, but it becomes less fun when the critter in question, not fully embracing his role of staring adoringly at the Christ Child, decides to make his own fun and head for the hills. The ultimate story of this of course took place in 1997, when Ernie the 600-pound camel blew off his gazing duties and hit the road — literally — running down the Washington DC beltway for several miles during rush hour, startling motorists and causing chaos until, sadly, he was hit and killed. But I digress.
Again, I can’t imagine more than a few people understood a word I was saying, but then again, that may have been for the better.
This might be a good time to mention that this dramatic extravaganza had a run time of just over three hours. Three hours. With no intermission. I can’t believe the parents didn’t pass out or riot. Proof that there are few lengths a parent won’t go to for their child. There was singing by all the grade levels, dancing, a juggler and every 30 minutes or so everyone on stage would freeze like a pause button had been hit and the “grown ups” from scene one would reappear to offer commentary. There were long monologues delivered in a variety of languages and tortured accents that likely would be found so un-PC today that there would be meetings for even thinking of it. Because we were kids, it didn’t occur to us we could probably have completely made our speeches up and very few people would be the wiser. At one point I’m pretty sure Prince Albert dozed off, but really, who could blame him?
Blessedly, at long last, it was over. The “grown ups” got the last scene, fade to black and shell shocked parents met their offspring in the lobby for cookies and cider. I heard more than one parent proclaim they needed something stronger than cider. At the time I didn’t get it. Now I do.
Yes, all these memories came flooding back to as I sat down to watch my adorable son sing some holiday favorites (OK, I actually only recognized one of the songs he sang, Silent Night, sung simultaneously in German, French, English and Spanish, because nothing says Christmas like drowning out your fellow man).
The aliens enjoyed it, too. What aliens? Oh, you know, the ones played by seventh graders who came down from outer space on laser beams to enjoy an earthling Christmas and communicated through their saxophones, at one point holding them up to their ears like cell phones.
Because why not? It’s Christmas, after all.
