Hope

Faces Of Christmas

Yesterday, it was NOVEMBER.

And guess what comes after November?

That’s right. Say it with me. December.

The most wonderful month of the year.

Just between us? 

December always sneaks up on me. I think it’s lightyears away. I think I have all the time in the world to get ready for the holidays. I think that there’s a ton of time before Santa comes for his cookies and milk on Christmas Eve.

And then?

I blink.

And December 25 knocks at the door.

So for this month's blog, I’m doing things a little bit differently. I'll be mindful of what Christmas is all about - HOPE, LOVE, JOY, and PEACE. To this end, I'm inviting you to enjoy selected excerpts from Barbara Robinson's delightful The Best Christmas Pageant Ever as we light each week's advent candle. 

Enjoy!

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Christmas isn't a season. It's a feeling. - Edna Ferber

The Christmas pageant is supposed to be the same every year. This year, however, the play has been hijacked by the Herdman children - Ralph, Imogene, Leroy, Claude, Ollie, and Gladys  - six skinny, stringy-haired siblings all alike except for being different sizes and having different black-and-blue places where they had clonked each other.

Imogene said, "I want to be Mary." She looked back over her shoulder. "And Ralph wants to be Joseph."

Nobody volunteered to be Wise Men, except, Leroy, Claude, and Ollie Herdman. So there was my mother, stuck with a Christmas pageant full of Herdmans in the main roles.

There was one Herdman left over, and one main role left over, and you didn't have to be very smart to figure out that Glady's was going to be the Angel of the Lord.

But with hopeful determination, the narrator's Mother vows:

"I'm going to make this the very best Christmas pageant anybody ever saw, and I'm going to do it with Herdmans, too."

This week, we light the candle of HOPE, that Christmas pageants all over the world will not only be the best Christmas pageant ever, but that the virtue of HOPE will envelop us all this season and through the years.

(To be continued)