The Best Christmas Pageant Ever

James and I just finished reading Barbara Robinson's The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, and I had forgotten how wholesomely endearing this book is. I laughed and cried and laughed and cried, and James kept saying, "Isn't this book silly?" all while asking earnest questions about the baby Jesus and the Holy Family inspired by the text. The final chapter sums it all up in such simple, childlike prose:

Ralph and Imogene [Herdman] were there all right, only for once they didn't come through the door pushing each other out of the way. They just stood there for a minute as if they weren't sure they were in the right place---because of the candles, I guess, and the church being full of people. They looked like the people you see on the six o'clock news---refugees, sent to wait in some strange ugly place, with all their boxes and sacks around them.

It suddenly occurred to me that this was just the way it must have been for the real Holy Family, stuck away in a barn by people who didn't much care what happened to them. They couldn't have been very neat and tidy either, but more like this Mary and Joseph (Imogene's veil was cockeyed as usual, and Ralph's hair stuck out all around his ears). Imogene had the baby doll but she wasn't carrying it the way she was supposed to, cradled in her arms. She had it slung up over her shoulder, and before she put it in the manger she thumped it twice on the back…. 

As for ruining the whole thing, it seemed to me that the Herdmans had improved the pageant a lot, just by doing what came naturally---like burping the baby, for instance, or thinking a ham would make a better present than a lot of perfumed oil.

This book will definitely become a family holiday classic since Thomas, Claire, and Anna need to hear it too. "And I thought about the Angel of the Lord---Gladys, with her skinny legs and her dirty sneakers sticking out from under her robe, yelling at all of us, everywhere: 'Hey! Unto you a child is born!'" Merry Christmas, everyone!