Try as I may, I literally couldn't help but listen to the lady talking with an outside voice with a thick brittish accent in a very open room, with lots and lots of reverb. It appears she was giving away tickets to her chruch's christmas pagent, well at least to the guy in front of me in line. I could launch into an us versus them thing here, because it feels very applicable, but I'll try to stay on topic. Anyway, christmas pagent. So this pagent will be huge. I'll note a couple of things I gleaned from her talking.
- parts of the Charlie Brown Christmas Story
- The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, including a huge cave placed over the stage with a massive stair case going down to the stage so "people can watch the Grinch walk down from his cave"
- numerous live animals for the nativity story
- carabeans and pullies and high ropes for use somewhere in the play
- broadway quality props
- something about pyrotechnics
We put all sorts of resources into putting on this huge impressive show with stuff flying around. We put out tickets and tell everyone we know so they can come see, and these are some nice tickets. We spend money on ad space to advertise how good our show is so people will come see.
This seems to be starkly opposite (minus the live animals) to the actual birth. If anything, Jesus birth was down-played. If I count correctly, only 10 people on earth were privy to the fact that Jesus had been born, and 7 of them relied on heavenly informants. 10 is even counting Jesus. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph being the 3. The wisemen, shepards, and the roman offical end up numbering 7 (I think). There was no huge horrah about the birth among people other than the emporer. Seems pretty opposite to me.
Let me take you on a journey back in time, not back to Jesus's birth, but back to my junior or senior year of high school to a reenactment of the birth done by a handful of korean highschoolers and one pasty white boy with a gotee and glasses. I was just dropping my best friend off so he could practice and then perform in front of everyone in a couple of hours when he invited me to stay and watch. I had never been to a completely korean baptist church before, where everything is preached in korean and then translated to english, so I stayed.
Ends up there weren't enough baptist-church-going-korean-high schoolers to cast a full crew, so up steps the pasty white boy to play a shepard. My role consisted of some pretty hardcore acting. I kneeled on one side of the small stage huddled around the campfire made of construction paper with the other two sheppards. My trip following the star to get to the new born jesus consisted of standing up from one knee, spinning around on my heels, and then dropping down to the other knee in the manger at the makeshift crib of our plastic baby Jesus.
It was simplicitly beautiful. It was absolutely nothing like broadway, and as far as production value goes, I'd probably put it just a tiny bit below the 1st grade christmas play. But thats what made it so beautiful. There was absolutely no huge productive stuff to get in the way of the downplayed story of God coming to earth, and it was incredibly touching.
Maybe we don't need to add all sorts of stuff, maybe the beautifully downplayed story of how God decided to enter directly into his creation is more than enough.
At the end of the play all us make-shift actors became the church choir and lead everyone in singing a few christmas songs... in korean. Apparently I'm incredibly good at faking korean singing. During practice the "choir" director stopped us all mid-song and said Duby you need to sing louder, I can't hear you. I continued to mouth, but I nailed the glorias.
Whats amazing, with the numerous churches I've been to since that day, I've never felt more welcome and loved, despite being the odd one out. That to me is what Christmas, and Christianity, is about, incredibly amazing love, crossing all boundries.
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