The Christmas Pageant

The Kindergarten classes at my son's school held their Christmas Pageant yesterday. I went to this gig alone because I couldn't get my husband out of REM sleep and I foisted the two-year-old off on Grandma because I figured there would be enough chaos over there without MaryJane The Hurricane skipping around. I also made a conscious decision not to bring a camera because I wanted to enjoy the program as a whole and not spend it trying to get a shot of my kid in antlers. I was the only person there not loaded down with recording equipment, jockeying for position and threatening to raise the school's insurance rates by climbing up on tables and leaning forward slightly, like being two inches closer to the action was going to elevate the quality of the result from merely awful to Oscar-worthy. The sight of a grade-school cafetorium packed with parents all leaning forward and peering through viewfinders was surreal to say the least. The kids all trooped onto the little stage, kitted out in various Christmas-y getups and we all spent five minutes waving to our kids and focusing the various cameras. Then they cranked up the music and fifty little kids started swaying and tunelessly singing We Wish You A Merry Christmas while a group of tinsel-covered little girls formed a sort of chorus line at the front of the stage, if chorus lines were comprised of heavily medicated mental patients, that is. Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer was next, and eight tiny pretenders lined up behind a tiny Santa Claus (who was largely concerned with not choking on his enormous beard) and began bobbing up and down and making vague hand gestures reminiscent of hula dancers as they crooned about poor old Rudolph while a couple of "elves" threw brightly wrapped boxes at each other. My son was in this group, playing Dasher and bobbing away like mad when he wasn't chasing boogers. I am certain that most of pictures the other parents got of this number feature my son in the act of nose-mining. Away In A Manger was next, featuring cows, sheep, Frankincense, kings, shepherds and a large tinselly star, but lacking Joseph, Mary and Baby Jesus. Frosty The Snowman, complete with Kid In Snowman Drag, was next. "Frosty" stood stock-still while a line of children supplied him with felt buttons, broomstick and Magic Hat, prompting "Frosty" to bust a move to thunderous applause, at least until his costume, which was held together with happy thoughts and Velcro, burst open and all the kids in the immediate vicinity tackled him in an attempt to stuff him back in. The teachers waded in and extracted "Frosty" and lined the kids up again using dark looks and more vague hand gestures. A rousing rendition on Jingle Bells finished off the mayhem and all the parents unravelled their surveillance equipment and squired their offspring homeward. It was interesting to note that while all of the parents had been instructed to send their children to school "wearing their Sunday best", the concept of "Sunday best" ranged from little girls in full makeup and taffeta party frocks to the kid who came to school in his pajamas. My son's idea of "Sunday best" was khakis, white shirt, crocodile belt that his Grandpa made for him out of a belt that his father wore in 1956, elaborately crafted hairdo and his "tie", which was the necklace that he got for Christmas last year, worn under hs collar so that just the Iron Cross pendant showed. He looked like an off-strip Vegas magician minus the cape full of rabbits, but he chose the outfit himself, which made him feel great and powerful. Adding to the surreal and somewhat psychedelic atmosphere was the fact that nearly every little boy in the show was wearing those light-up sneakers and with all the bobbing and tackling going on up there, I am suprised that nobody had a seizure over all those flashing sneakers. All in all, the event was extremely amusing, and the real stars were the four teachers charged with executing a coherent program featuring fifty little children and countless boogers.