This Christmas season brings its own annual treats - not least of which are the Nativity plays and pageants, the particular pride and delight of schools both large and small. It amazes me how the old, old story is so often re-told (and rightly so since it tells so clearly of the astonishing love of our God) yet they still find it possible to put in a different twist every year. I'm always reminded of the play in a Punjabi school, when a belligerent and sceptical Virgin Mary told a meek Archangel Gabriel, in quite unmistakeable terms, where he could go with his strange greeting: I felt she almost scuppered the entire divine plan of salvation, so explicit was she. Or, out there too, there was the Epiphany contest to find the best-dressed and decorated camel and Wise Man (it made a change from Miss World) when two of the camels took a fancy to each other and headed off at speed to find a quiet bit of desert where they could be alone, with terrified wise men clinging on for dear life. Stable and Holy Family, in their path, were efficiently scattered. King Herod would have been chuffed!

Sometimes, script-writers are most ingenious, but I do suspect that schools sometimes find it tempting to reprise some of the previous term's class-subject matter and re-use some of the "props" already prepared for that. I don't blame them: there's stress enough in school these days. So this year our parish infant school introduced Three Wise Cossacks, one bearing a gift which looked suspiciously like a hip-flask of vodka for the Babe; and then Three Wise Mandarin Chinese, presumably from the local take-away. The Cossacks performed a most creditable, high-kicking Russian dance, which, however, I felt, would have caused havoc in the little cave of Bethlehem, scaring the ox and ass and probably adding immeasurably to the wonder of the shepherds. But so what? Didn't God come for ALL the world, and didn't He take us just as we are and still love us boundlessly?

I'm sure He appreciated the other Christmas play I attended, put on by the children of a Special School. The basic tableau was already in place and the Baby was due to be brought in by a Down's Syndrome child dressed as an angel. Unfortunately the child got stage-fright at the critical moment and had to be propelled into our midst with the doll in his arms. Seeing his mother in the audience he abandoned his mission and headed for her, leaving the rest of the cast calling frantically to him. Turning round half way down the aisle, he launched the baby like a Scud missile through the air and Mary caught it deftly with one hand and began to cuddle it. The MCC would have been proud of her!

And was it not truly in the generous, God-like spirit of Christmas that an old friend of mine achieved his dream of producing a live nativity play to be viewed by the residents of his hospice for the seriously ill? He had to persuade a young mum to bring her new-born baby to a cold, floodlit garden at midnight; to have a donkey man from the nearby seaside bring a donkey; to have a local farmer turn up with a lamb from his flock; to persuade a zoo to send along a llama (other types of camels are not keen on work at midnight and can get quite stroppy). And they all turned up! On the stroke of midnight, hidden behind the stable-shed, he lit a rocket which soared above them all like a star of Bethlehem and the well-swaddled baby was slipped into the scene while everyone looked up at the star.

Yet, for all our efforts, we can never match the sheer wonder of the original Christmas. May God bless you and yours with peace and joy this season and may we find happiness in 2003!

Father Bill