Christmas Past

At this time of the year with a large part of my family overseas I was remembering Christmas's past when my own children were young and also the many nativity plays I've put on either at church or at school. When our children were young we always acted out the nativity including the 3 kings. I remember when our youngest daughter desperate to play Mary, played her with great seriousness even though her right leg was in plaster! I remember my husband was always typcast as Herod because of his stong deep voice! At school my greatest delight was once persuading a boy to be an angel. After all, all the named angels - Michael and Gabriel- had male names. So for our brave boy angel we ditched the white robes and tinsel round the head and gave him a simple and manly angel costume of austere gold. He played the part with great seriousness and dignity and it was extremely moving. Another year I shall never forget, we picked a beautiful but rather highly strung girl for Mary; all went well until Joseph made a slight mistake and Mary picked up Baby Jesus, who fortunately that year was a doll, and hit him over head with it! There were also some very touching years... when a 7year old 'Mary' sat on the front of the stage with 'Jesus' in her arms and her eyes fixed on Him, sang in a gentle, sweet voice "Sleep Quietly my Jesus..." And mostly I remember we chose as 'Mary' a dear little 8 year old and a few days before the play was performed she was diagnosed with a serious and ultimately fatal disease. But she insisted on going ahead and played her part beautifully. Now it's just Alex and me and we do no acting but he loves to get the Bible out and asks me to read aloud for us both the greatest true story ever.