Of course, these days someone (not me) has stretched the cast list so that we can include everyone. Who can forget the memorable scene in Love, Actually…**
Karen: So what's this big news, then?
Daisy: [excited] We've been given our parts
in the nativity play. And I'm the lobster!
Karen: The lobster?
Daisy: Yeah!
Karen: In the nativity play?
Daisy: [beaming] Yeah, first lobster.
Karen: There was more than one lobster
present at the birth of Jesus?
Daisy: Duh.
The Christmas lobsters. As you do.
You think that's bad? At one of my previous schools, they hit on the idea of stocking out the stable with sundry animals. There were cows and horses and sheep and… pigs.
Yes. Pigs. In a Jewish stable.
"The piglets are oinking, the baby awakes,
But little Lord Jesus, no butties he makes…
Because he's Jewish!!!"
Pigs might.
What made it all worse was that there was one little boy who was terribly upset because he wanted to be a Christmas pig. And he'd been denied that role, deliberately or otherwise, which was perhaps fortunate because he was… Muslim.
He could have wanted to be anybody: sheep, wise man, Joseph. No problem. But imagine the scene in some family homes when the Muslim son arrives home to declare he's playing porky pig in a Jewish stable in a Christian play. Clue: it's the pork bit that has the greatest capacity for a diplomatic incident.
The real Christmiss Piggy
That was long ago and far away.
Thank goodness.
When I was a boy, I was cast as Joseph! The next year I was a shepherd. The following year I was on percussion. That's been my trajectory ever since…
Joseph was not a taxing role. Except to a nervous young boy who didn't want to be up on a stage. All I had to do was walk with Mary (one of the slightly stuck-up girls from my class, I thought), rat-a-tat-tat on a door or two and report back to 'er outdoors that "there wasn't any room and we can't stay here, they haven't any room for strangers, though the night may be dark and the wind might be cold and full of funny noises in the night." Odd that I can remember, 37 years on, the lines that proved so elusive back then. My class teacher Mrs Williams told me that if I forgot the lines once more she'd punch me on the nose.
Gosh, all my childhood trauma is coming back.
Anyway. That was me. Who were you?
The Christmas octopus? Was that you?
And an exercise I find fruitful at Christmas is asking yourself just who you'd be in that story. And rather than run a Cosmo-style Christmas Quiz (Score 45-50? You are such a Herod. Keep those children away this Yuletide!) I thought I'd spend a few days offering you some alternatives and a thought or two.
My preferred Christmas Piggy.
Today… are you most like the angels? Angels are busy in the Christmas story. Busy with mary and Joseph and shepherds and filling the sky with their dancing. Maybe you're a busy person? Maybe you feel you should play the angel, flying hither and yon, running errands and making sure everyone else's Christmas works. Maybe you've got so many people you feel you have to look in on and care for that you don't seem to get a moment to yourself. I have no tree and I rarely dangle my baubles anywhere, and that's mostly because of the busy thing. So maybe you've met yourself coming back and you feel either tired or faintly resentful at everyone else stealing your time and energy? Maybe you have a list of engagements as long as Mr Tickle's arm of stuff you need to accomplish and people you'd like to visit before Christmas comes.
That you?
The thing we should spot if we feel this way is this: the angels joined in the celebrations. They trumpeted in the sky after their visit to the shepherds. They were never too busy to join in.
Don't you get to the other side of Christmas and wish you'd stopped to hear the angels sing. Make some space. Remember that other Mary - she of Mary and Martha fame - and how she sat down at the feet of Jesus in defiance of all her sister's fevered preparations and busyness. Martha was busy building up a steam of resentment in the meantime, and when her pressure cooker burst its banks* Jesus had only this deeply infuriating (or deeply inviting) thing to say: "She has chosen the best thing and she won't let anyone take it away from her."
A pressure cooker, yesterday.
It's okay to feel busy, as long as you don't let busy have the last word. Light a candle. Guard your own time with Jesus. Be an angel to yourself as well this year.
*mixed metaphor. Sorry.
** My theory is that the best Christmas films are the ones in which it's only incidentally Christmas: Love, Actually or Die Hard Whichever or Gremlins or It's A Wonderful Life.
My other theory is that people put up blue Christmas lights because it puts criminals in mind of the police and deters burglaries. What does anyone think?
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