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Why I Skipped Church This Morning
The Sunday before Christmas, I should be in church, shouldn’t I? I mean, “Remember the Sabbath and keep it Holy,” right? OK, but … I’m not. And the reason for this comes down to two words: Christmas Program.
This is the Sunday they’re going to drag those poor helpless children to the front of the chapel and have them sing religious Christmas songs and read the account of the Nativity in Matthew. These things are mainly for the parents. For the kids, it’s an awkward and uncomfortable experience, you can see it in their defensive body language and hear it in their hesitant little voices. For everyone else, it’s just painful.
So, I will keep the Sabbath Holy by spending time preparing for the big day next Friday, keeping a faithful and grateful attitude, and later on prayer and reading some scripture.
But I can’t face those poor, dead-eyed children this year.
Published in General, Religion & Philosophy
If that is the way the children present themselves then somebody is directing them poorly.
Amen, Brother V.
But I showed up this morning because it makes people nervous. Me showing up at the First Church of the Democratic National Committee is widely seen as one of the Seven Signs of the Apocalypse.
Yes, I’m very sorry to hear that too. Really, you ought to talk to the head of the Sunday school program and suggest another person manage the kids’ Christmas presentation. It’s pretty hard to keep kids’ enthusiasm down at most Christmas programs, but the people coordinating it have to share their joy with the kids.
I wrote & directed a number of Christmas pageants when my kids were little, and the church was packed every time. Parents’ & kids’ delight just bubbles over when the Christmas story is presented with joy.
I remember this time of year being one of my favorites at church mostly because of our Christmas plays. Maybe it was because my mom was the choir director. I think most of the time everybody enjoyed it.
I hear you, V —
the worst is when they present original poetry. Who told these young people every poem has to rhyme?
I think this is more a matter of personal perception. I hate those things too, but at my church the kids seem to enjoy it. They did a play last week and the kids in it had a lot of fun, but I stayed far away because I knew I couldn’t handle it. My mother in law took my boys to go see it.
For me, plays and choir performances are things to be in, not to be seen. This is why I can sing through Handel’s Messiah, but I’ve never seen it performed.
Well… not every parent enjoys them, either. Ours didn’t.
Having been at Christmas pageants where a wide range of talent was on display, yes, the small children that everyone else thought were so adorable simply struck me as insecure and scared.
I winkled my way into a church with a good music program, though, so children rapidly improved by age-group, and the overall effect was generally one of reasonably competent confidence.
Perhaps there’s just wide innate variety in adults’ capacity to enjoy children’s efforts in these matters.
My parents couldn’t enjoy kids being cute but unskilled even when it was their own kid up there, and it wasn’t because my parents were evil. “Cute” just wasn’t innately appealing to them.
Let the kids dramatize “A Charlie Brown Christmas”. They’d compete to be Linus.
Our church does the pageant after mass, so the people who attend are the families of the kids. Outside of Christmas, the sad thing is when they get the kids in the confirmation classes to sing after communion. They stand up there and whisper…or just stand. Of course once they are actually confirmed, 90 percent of them and their families will not be seen again until they have to punch their ticket at Easter or Christmas.
Ours was a special on Sunday Evening (we typically do not have a Sunday Evening service).
I stayed home, let someone who wants to be there have the seat.
The church I grew up in was blessed with great singing voices and it carried down to the kids. I think this may be a reason why it wasn’t that bad. We were a small church, too.
I’ve written and directed a number of Christmas programs. I always tried to have parts for talented kids to do much and short funny things to do for others. As those kids have grown, they speak fondly of the productions. Most of the adults seemed to enjoy them as well, but I do know folks that stayed home when kids were performing. (Scrooges and Grinchs are an important part of Christmas too.) I also always tried to keep the programs short, 20 to 25 minutes. (I missed church today as well. Flu.)
Palm Sunday is worse, every year I forget until it starts and then think ‘oh , no, here we go again ‘
I’m on my way to the grandchildren’s pageant tonight but it’s a separate affair at 7pm so the only victims will be the parents and grandparents.
V the K:
When I was a kid, and later as a Lutheran school teacher, we had these programs on Christmas Eve. As a kid, it seemed the right thing to go to Saturday practices for a month (though I would rather have done something else) and go through the ordeal of memorization and production before we could be allowed to enjoy Christmas. It probably instilled a sense of salvation by works rather than grace, but other than that it was good for us.
We have no grandchildren, so today we were able to sit and enjoy watching other peoples’ kids do their parts, and watched the parents watch their children. The children all seemed to enjoy it, which isn’t always the case. The program was done fairly briskly. That helped, I suppose.
I’ll save my Christmas program stories from my days as a teacher for another time.
At the First Church of the DNC this morning the kids read off giant cue cards. It was, to paraphrase our founding father, “Bob Hope in a sheep costume.”
Well, at least they didn’t use a teleprompter.
As our church’s small kids are limited to a hand bell choir (colored bells + colored cards for the non readers) this is not an issue. Palm Sunday? The major danger of Palm Sunday are the razor sharp fronds handed out at Sunday School and the energetic tots who wave them around.
Being a Catholic means that Christmas pageants happen in the school gym or church hall. Never during Holy Mass on Sunday.
Think about it!
I tried to catch the early service to avoid such, there was no early service. So, I went to the range and destroyed some paper, then enjoyed the service anyway.
I once asked my sister, who’s children had been in such programs (mine are too young), whether they looked at photos or watched videos in reminiscence. She laughed and said they hadn’t, acknowledging she wielded the point and shoot while their father had the camcorder.
I’ll let you all know in a few years if I do the same.
Don’t.
The best thing I never did was take a lot of video tape of my children. As a television professional I vowed that I would not watch my children grow up through the lens of a video camera. It’s not natural.
Some of the older kids participate with great reluctance. Younger kids generally enjoy it, unless they are really very young, or else are new to the congregation. I don’t think younger kids should be pressed into service. I think it is good for the older kids, though, and I have leaned on some of my Sunday School students to go along and help out. It teaches them how to help wrangle the younger kids, and provides more competent actors for the main parts, and they learn how to communicate with the little kids and the pageant directors. They typically get over their reluctance.
The Childrens’ Christmas Pageant is a good way to share the gospel.
Ditto Orthodox. Derail the Divine Liturgy for a pageant? Not just no. Bonus: We’re Western Rite, so in addition to liturgies-instead-of-pageants, we also get the Festival of Lessons and Carols on this past Saturday night. :)
Well, I should have invited all of you to our Week-Before-Christmas service. I am the organist, and I play for the children’s meetings, too. This is my FAVORITE week for church!
We had a little group of six children between 5 and 11 sing “Away in A Manger” complete with the “asleep, asleep” parts and they were fantastic. Some teens sang another beautiful song. A small group of adults sang another number. In between were scripture readings and a short sermon. The entire congregation joined in for two songs. It was really nice.
None of us are professionals, not me, not the children, not the people who direct the music. We just try really hard to do our best, and those unseen angels jump right in and add to it, so the Spirit is strongly testifying about the Savior to all in attendance. Come on over next year!
I cannot express how strange it was to read this.
And not for the reason you might think.
I do not celebrate Christmas, neither does our church.
Unitarian or Episcopal?
Wow. I have amazing, intensely positive memories of being in a (school) pageant as a child. I think I felt the loving presence of God more directly through the Christmas pageant than at any other time in my early life. I hope you are wrong and the kids are getting more out of the pageant than you think.
Yeah I was wondering what the heck this “Christmas pageant” everyone was talking about was, now I understand why I’ve never seen one.
Probably depends on the child. Every time as a child I was dragged into some kind of school play or what not I was miserable, but then I’ve always had intense stage fright.
It’s not always a pageant, though. Sometimes it includes one. Often it does not.