The Best Christmas Pageant Ever

     "And this was the funny thing about it all. For years, I'd thought about the wonder of Christmas, and the mystery of Jesus' birth, and never really understood it. But now, because of the Herdmans, it didn't seem so mysterious after all.
     When Imogene had asked me what the pageant was about, I told her it was about Jesus, but that was just part of it. It was about a new baby, and his mother and father who were in a lot of trouble - no money, no place to go, no doctor, nobody they knew. And then, arriving from the East (like my uncle from New Jersey ) some rich friends.
     But Imogene, I guess, didn't see it that way. Christmas just came over her all at once, like a case of chills and fever. And so she was crying, and walking into furniture."

---

Barbara Robinson

Robinson (1927 - 2013) wrote articles for McCall's, Good Housekeeping, the Ladies Home Journal and Redbook before publishing her first children's novel, Across from Indian Shore, in 1962. The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, first published as a short story in McCall's in 1971, was adapted as a made-for-TV Christmas special, as well as performed as a children's play.

Story Synopsis

The Herdmans were the worst kids in town -- they lied, stole, fought, set fires, and bullied other children, as well as each other. When they showed up to Sunday School for the refreshments and joined the Christmas Pageant everyone was shocked and ready for disaster. But the Herdmans had never heard of Christmas story and you'd think the story came right out of the FBI files by the way they interpreted it.

---

Wonder

When we see it made real, sometimes the mysterious is not really mysterious at all. We forget the Holy Family's all-too familiar struggles by annually romanticizing the birth of Jesus. Mary and Joseph must have been appalled and panicked to give birth in a barn or cave away from home. And surely Jesus was not the perfect new-born without any needs whatsoever depicted year after year. When we stop to make the story match reality, the true wonder emerges: Jesus identifies with the least of us because he lived as the least of us.

Early chapter book readers, 80 pages.  An all-around troublesome and Scripture-ignorant set of six siblings hijack the annual Christmas Pageant.