Unhappy Holidays part I - The Christmas Pageant

Christmas is a mixed bag with me - it was the best of times, and it was the worst of times. We Catholics anticipate Christmas all the year. While Easter is a downer (the King is dead, long live the King...) Christmas is all about a babe in a manger, shepherds guarding their sheep, three kings bearing gifts, a poor man, a donkey, and the Virgin Mary. As a little kid, I had fantasies about being the Virgin Mary. She was so kind and accepting, so solemn and calm. In none of the statues or paintings or drawings of her, does she have any expression except tranquility. (Lightyears away from my character - but there you go - we all want what we can't have.) I imagined myself as Mary during the Christmas pageant - after all, our church had a Christmas pageant, right? Not at first - they didn't even sing at first; this was the hard, Puritan, New England Catholic church, built of invincible gray granite, no fancy trim, not even any singing or choir. But that year, a new priest declared it "the year of the pageant" and it included all the kids in Sunday school, even me, even though I'd been kicked out. But I had dispensation because as a Catholic child, I - along with a handful of other Catholic children going to the local public school - was bussed to the church on Wednesday afternoons (missing study hour) to confess and save my mortal soul. So I was excited. For the first time ever, I would try out for the part of the Virgin Mary.

On the day of the try outs, it became obvious the the words 'try outs' were misleading. We arrived, stood in line, and the priest and his accolytes moved down the line pointing. To the boys it went:  "King, angel, shepherd, king, Joseph, shepherd, king, cow, donkey."  To the girls it was: "Angel, angel, angel, Mary, angel, angel, sheep, sheep, sheep." 

I felt sorry for the cow and donkey - then I was declared a sheep. I wasn't even an angel. I would have nothing but 'baaaa' to say and wear a white fluffly sweater, a knit hat with ears, and sit quietly in the background imitating a sheep. The animals were taken to a small room for our costume fitting (the cow was a brown coat, a hat vaguely reminiscent of a Viking helmet, and a cowbell. The donkey was a gray blanket and a paper mâché head with huge doney ears made out of cardboard. The sheep were, as I said, white fluffy sweaters and knit caps with little ears. It soon became obvious that the animal kingdom included the trouble-makers. The new priest must have been informed by the sisters which of us were best left in the background. But this cowed us - including the cow. We were oddly silent as we sat on our folding chairs, our costumes on our laps. Each of us had secretly been hoping for the starring role - Mary, Joseph or a king, or even better, an angel (who wouldn't want a pair of wings and a supercilious expression to wear?)

We spent the remaining half hour plotting ways to increase our visibility with the crowd - the donkey considered ways of moving its ears (and maybe taking a shit - I won't lie - we were the Sunday school dropouts) and the cow and sheep all just sat and sulked. And then one of the nuns poked her head in the door and said the bus was here, to leave our costumes on our chairs, and to remember that we had to come to each rehersal, because if one of the main characters or angels (God forbid) got sick, we would have the honor of replacing them.  Is it un-Christian to wish the angels catch the flu?

(Stay tuned for part II - Unhappy Holidays)