December 17th

Unlike most children, I don't think I ever starred in a Nativity - well not until playing the star at church when I was 17!! I don't quite know how this happened, maybe I was part of one at playschool, when I was too young to remember, but at primary school it never happened. My first Christmas, aged 5, I was one of 4 girls chosen to sit on stage and then at one part of the performance we had to skip off the stage, dance around the Christmas tree alone, then with our teddy bears and then skip back on stage (don't ask me what happened in the rest of the performance, I have no idea... I also have no idea why I was chosen to dance as I had never had dance lessons).

In the January I skipped into the second class, so my next Christmas, aged 6, I was in the third year. I was off when the parts were given out, so I was given a bauble to hang on the Christmas Tree - our year's part of the performance was to tell the story of the Christmas tree. At one point, the girl who was playing the Christmas tree was not going to be there, so I was given the part... but then on the day of the performance she was there and a girl was missing from the year below, so I was turfed off, given a halo of tinsel and told to stand up after a certain carol and say in a loud voice "S is for the shepherds". Needless to say, my mum was shocked to see my doing something different to what I'd told her I would be doing, but it went well.

I forget what happened after that... the junior years tended to put on a performance of Gilbert and Sullivan... we did The Mikado but I can't remember if it was Christmas or not. The next two years I remember singing but not being "in" a play and the final year we did Cinderella and I was in the choir. Then I went to secondary school and apart from one year when I took part in the chorus of the annual Christmas show (that year, Return to the Forbidden Planet), I never went on stage again. Not at Christmas.

So there you have it... I never played Mary, or an Angel, or even the donkey. Even so, watching children in a Nativity still means "Christmas" to me... I saw younger friends taking part, I saw it on tv, I saw it in church... oh I lie... I remember now, I played the Angel at church when the Girl Guides put on a Nativity - oh the shame of having lied to you all!! What a good job I wrote this post, I reminded me of my moment of glory as the Angel bringing good news, and creeping round the back of the pews to get from the choir stalls where I visited Mary, to the pulpit where I announced Jesus' birth to the shepherds. Good times, good times...