My friend Audrianna told me awhile back that her two daughters had auditioned and got parts for a stage play of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. It seems that both girls were familiar with the story.  One had read the book at school and the other’s teacher had read the book to her class. When their mother told them that the Community Theatre was holding auditions for children’s parts for a play on that very story, both girls begged to try out. Awhile later, auditions were held for adult parts, and my friend, figuring that she’d be there with her daughters anyway and being a fun-loving person, decided to try out too.  She got a part.

For the uninitiated, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever is from a book written by Barbara Robinson.  Her book, published by Harper Collins, has won several distinguished book awards and was made into a movie that came out in 1972.

I didn’t know about the book or the movie when we first watched it  one Christmas Eve with our first two children. It quickly became our favourite. I went out and bought the book.  It became a yearly tradition to read the book to my daughters coming up to Christmas each year, then on Christmas Eve we watched the movie together. That is, until our family started attending church regularly on Christmas Eve. After that, reading the book was still a good thing to do.

The story begins with a young boy named Charlie, once more having lost his school lunch, and especially his dessert, to one of the Herdmans who just happened to  be in his class.  Charlie resigns himself to the perpetual loss and says that it doesn’t matter, because he gets lots more dessert at church. What Charlie never dreamed of happening was that the five rowdy Herdman children would show up at church just in time to get parts for the yearly Christmas pageant.

My friend’s daughter Olivia played  Gladys, the youngest of the notorious Herdman children; Nina gained the part of Ellen, one of the Sunday School regulars; and my friend Audrianna was cast as Mrs. McCarthy.

Get your tickets soon, my friend had told me a few weeks previous. Some performances had already been sold out, but there were still some good seats on the 11th, so that’s the one we decided to attend. The cast rehearsed for months, starting in August for the children and October for the adults, while other school children worked on the artistic effects for the stage— the stained glass windows— and choirs practised for the musical parts in the church play, and while my friend created a banner that hangs high in the centre-back stage.

Like a kid at Christmas, I could hardly wait to see the play. .. Read more tomorrow.