Day Twenty 2016

Tonight we went to Christmas Eve service and Pastor Kent said the twelve days of Christmas start tomorrow, so I figure I am off the hook for not making it to 25 days on target.  I have till Epiphany, and I heard from Kent who surely heard it from Jesus. 

My favorite part of the Christmas eve service is the children’s pageant, where the youngest children enact the nativity story.  It is an exercise in chaos.  Regardless of how prepared Kristin is, the play is like herding cats, and never seems to go the way it was planned. That is what I love about it.  

Tonight I thought the show was stolen by a little girl I thought was portraying a sheep.  She vigorously flapped her arms and nodded her head throughout the performance.  I thought maybe she was an angel, but the angels all had halos and wings.  I even asked Matthew, he said she was a sheep, and he had no idea why the sheep was flapping her arms.

As it turns out, she was a dove, which was confirmed by the children’s minister afterwards.  She was an excellent dove, and her performance makes so much more sense with that bit of information.  I blame the costume department.

After it was over my boys recalled when they had their turns as shepherds.  My Paul recalled that the year he got to dress up, none of the children’s costumes fit him. So they gave him a sheet, and a head wrap.  He looked like a shepherd until the head wrap he was tugging at came off and then pretty much he was a 10 year old in stripped sheet.

Children’s Christmas pageants? Always bring me joy.