I have attended church Christmas programs for nigh on to sixty-five years. I”m older than that but wasn’t taken to church until I was in grade school. However, once I started the habit of attending church every week, I never stopped until my health issues became so bad I couldn’t go.
Christmas programs were always pretty much the same, because the churches we attended were fairly small congregations. There were no fancy choirs with satiny robes, no magnificent organs, no brass ensembles. But there was always a piano and sometimes a guitar.
The program usually started with everybody singing “Joy To The World” and very few singers would have known who Handel was even if they had noticed his name at the top of the music in the hymn book.
Throughout the program we would sing “It Came Upon A Midnight Clear” and “O Come Let Us Adore Him” and other favorite carols. “O Little Town of Bethlehem” was usually used as the call to prayer because of the beautiful lyric “O Holy Child of Bethlehem, descend to us we pray. Cast out our sin and enter in, be born in us today. We hear the Christmas angels the Great Glad Tidings tell, O come to us, abide with us, our Lord Emmanuel.”
We would close with “Silent NIght”, often sung a cappella, or if there was a guitarist present, we used the guitar because a lone guitar was the first instrument used when Joseph Mohr presented the lyrics for the first time in December 1818.
When I became a pastor, I continued the tradition of children’s Christmas programs, trying to keep them as similar to the ones I remembered growing up, because it was always about the children and they had a special poem or recitation to memorize and say at the beginning of the program. They would be dressed up by proud parents in their best clothing and cautioned to be on their best behavior.
There was always the hustle and bustle of getting a group of excited children dressed in costume prior to the program. It usually took more adults than we had children just to keep up.
Dressing some of the boys in their dad’s bathrobe and fastening a scarf on their heads so they could portray the shepherds, talking some of the older boys into wearing colorful robes and putting an aluminum foil crown on their heads to represent the three Wise Men, and of course angels of all sizes and shapes, wrapped in white, with gold tinsel stuck in their hair for a halo.
Joseph and Mary always had special costumes, Mary with a blue shawl around her head and shoulders. We would fashion a rough shelter of some kind to look like an old shed. It seemed every church I ever attended always had a wooden manger stuck somewhere in the basement or a storage room, and the kids were eager to bring it out, wipe off the cobwebs, and fill it with fresh straw.
Then came the joy of finding just the right size doll to fit in the manger. A couple of times we used newborn babies if we had them in the congregation and the parents were willing to turn them over to a couple of kids to watch over them in the manger.
I would read the Christmas story from the Bible and the children would close by singing “Away In A Manger”. Every child should have the opportunity to be in a church Christmas program at least one time in their young lives.
One of my favorite Christmas stories is one I heard many years ago. The story was also based on a children’s Christmas program which took place in a little country school in the early 1900’s. The children were being given their “parts to say” for the pageant but one little boy felt left out. Billy was what we now call a special child or a developmentally disabled boy and back in those days, the teacher just assumed he was not capable of taking part in a program.
But he begged her to be in the play and she finally made up a part for him as the innkeeper in Bethlehem. She told him he only had to say two words over and over, “No room, no room”. The children practiced the play for several days and Billy played out his role as innkeeper very well.
Finally the big night came. The little schoolhouse was beautifully decorated with a small tree strung with popcorn, and bearing many homemade paper ornaments colored in crayons by the children. Parents and friends had gathered in until the building was packed and the play began.
The couple chosen to represent Mary and Joseph made their way to the inn and knocked on the door. Billy, crudely dressed as the innkeeper, opened the door and Joseph asked if there was a vacant room. Billy shook his head and said, No room, no room. Joseph explained that his wife was ready to have a baby and they were desperate to find a place to spend the night.
The children had practiced it this way, and Billy said again, in his most gruff voice, “No room, no room”.
But in the presence of the large crowd, the older boy playing Joseph decided to add some extra drama and continued to plead with real urgency in his voice. Billy was not prepared for the more intense begging from Joseph. He stood there for a moment, and then caught up in the emotion of the scene, big tears began to run down his face, and he opened the door wide and said, “Come in, Joseph, you and Mary can have my room.”
There wasn’t a dry eye in the school house that night, as all the adults were brought to a spirit of worship as they saw developing before them the true meaning of Christmas - the willingness to share what we have with others in need.
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