Hey, Unto You, Too!: Christmas Pageants and the Gift of Women’s Ministry

You don’t need to rearrange your life around it,” a friend recently texted me about the Christmas pageant at our small-town parish. I had mentioned that my son was missing his December campout for Cub Scouts for it, as my children were deliberating about which role preferences to mark on the forms to give back to their religious education teachers the following Sunday. My now nine-year-old daughter, who had wobbled around our parish’s John Paul II Center two years ago with her arms stuck out to the side in a shiny, polyester gold star costume, announced without skipping a beat that she wanted to be a camel this year. Her one-time stint as a star was enough. She never wanted to be in the spotlight again! My ten-year-old son wanted to be one of the three Magi—a king. Unlike her, he hoped for one of the few, one-line speaking parts of the plays for a kid his age.

I cannot remember what I responded to my friend, one of the intrepid leaders of our Christmas pageant and one of the women whom I most admire in my parish. Yet the truth is, since the first time we have been a part of our pageant, my family has always organized our lives around it. Like for most readers, pageant season for my family arrives in the midst of one of the busiest times for us. In addition to being a mom, I am a college literature professor: there are final exams to be given, essays to read, and grades to calculate. Commencement and award ceremonies fall within this period. End-of-year self-evaluations tied to promotion are due.

These professional duties obviously do not include my children’s school performances or dance recitals. They also do not cover end-of-semester gatherings with students, family, friends, and coworkers. And then there is all the other holiday hoopla that somehow sneaks onto the calendar—all exciting and merry, all exhausting and time-intensive.

Yet the Nativity play, which always takes place during Advent, is one tradition I will not compromise any part of our family’s schedule for, even while a camping trip or Nutcracker rehearsal might slide. It helps my children—and I believe Catholic children everywhere who participate in ministries like it—connect with the liturgical life of the Church, complementing their knowledge and affective experience of Scripture and Tradition. The pageant is crucial to my family’s domestic church. Whether we are encountering a fact about Jesus’s birth for the first time, rediscovering an old one, or noticing something new in the story because of recent life experiences, my goal is to model a commitment to contemplating the mystery of the Incarnation and to emphasize the importance of actively participating in parish life.

Yes: I believe all of that can be accomplished by attending and participating in one’s local parish Christmas pageant.

Pageant Roles, Theological Lessons

Here’s the thing: last year, after her “starring role” the previous one, my daughter desperately wanted to be an angel. But our choir director changed the guidelines so only those who were already in choir, which my daughter was not, could wear angel costumes. My then eight-year-old was assigned as a sheep. She cried. Sobbed really. In front of everyone. Then, she stomped her way out to the bathroom and would not come out of a stall for most of the first rehearsal. It was not until she was fitted for a sheep costume and encouraged by the pageant director that she began to feel a little better. Imagine the last few words being said in a sniffly, little girl voice, after you have been crouched on forty-year-old knees in a bathroom stall while other moms mill in and out with their perfectly behaved children dressed as various barnyard animals, and, you guessed it, angels.

On the car ride home, my daughter—feeling a little better—and I, whose knees were not feeling much better at all—talked about how Jesus cares for all of his sheep, us. Sheep are as important to the Christmas story as angels, I nudged. Later that evening, we read Jesus’s words in John 10:14 together: “I am the good shepherd, and I know mine and mine know me.” We wondered aloud: How does the Lord know his sheep so well, and why are they such important animals in various scripture places? This led us to discuss Jesus’s parable of the lost sheep in Matthew 18:10-14 and Luke 15:1-7. When my daughter asked if I would search after her, like the shepherd does his one lost sheep out of the 100 in the parable, I answered without hesitation: “Yes, I would—and so would Jesus—wherever you wandered, even into bathroom stalls.”

Later, we practiced our best bleating sounds together, even enticing her dad and brother to join in on the fun. This interaction with our parish’s pageant ministry, when my daughter did not get her way of being an angel, transformed her relationship with the Nativity story and deepened our appreciation and understanding of it. This year, an angel is not at the top of her wish list. Nor is a star, as I mentioned at the start of this essay. Instead, she wants to be another one of the animals who heard God’s message and followed him. Maybe we can talk about camels this year? she asked as she checked off that form to turn into her catechesis teacher.

Similarly, my bookish son, who is a little tall for his age, has been a shepherd in the pageant almost every year. Last year, he was asked to step in as a Magi in a non-speaking role because another child missed practice. He loved it. For him, though, the highlight was not the role change—it was venturing outside during a break and playing with a slightly older, outdoorsy boy completely different from him. This connection did not occur naturally; it occurred because the two boys were more or less stuck together while the younger “sheep and camels” figured out their places on stage. (And one, as you have just read, wandered away altogether.)

I will not share too much here to protect my son’s fifth-grade street cred, but the pageant provided him an unexpected opportunity to connect with another parishioner he otherwise would not have and move out of his comfort zone. He is not much of a talker, but after this pageant, I began hearing stories from the playground about conversations sparked by this connection. He and his new friend, who also attends his public-school chat about Easter and parish festivals occasionally: Were we going to Mass at the same time as this other family? When would we go to Confession again? And because my children always have their priorities straight: Who would get the ashes first on Ash Wednesday?

The pageant role did more than bring him closer to the Nativity story as words on a page or a story heard over and over. Like my daughter, it nudged my son into the communal life of the parish community and the universal Church in ways that could not have been planned for by myself or occurred within another type of more conventional ministry.

The Nativity Play and Eucharistic Culture

In Becoming a Eucharistic People: The Hope and Promise of Parish Life, Timothy O’Malley explains that we often assume our parishes embody what he calls a “Eucharistic culture” for the obvious reason that we celebrate Mass there. While these spaces are indeed where parishioners come together to partake in the source and summit of our faith, O’Malley argues that promoting a Eucharistic culture goes beyond participation in the liturgy solely. He asserts that:

Our parishes in the United States exist in a wide array of cultures that might be inhospitable to the Catholic worldview. For examples, many residents of the United States think of the worship as a private affair. The individual chooses some of her free time on Sundays to belong to a congregation. Otherwise, this worship has nothing to do with the rest of her life. . . . The parish may take on this private culture, never asking that the parishioners integrate faith and life. Parishioners may run off to their family units after Mass, rarely getting to know their neighbors in the next pew. After all, in this case the real purpose of Mass is one’s individual (or nuclear family’s) sanctification, not belonging to the Communion of the Body of Christ with all believers.[1]

Building a domestic culture at home is not enough then. Attending Mass on Sundays is not enough either. It is when domestic culture intersects with parish culture that we ought to strive to work toward sanctification, not as individuals or families, but alongside the Body of Christ.

With this in mind, I argue that ministries like Christmas pageants are one way we can help children and the adults who guide them to understand more fully how to live as Catholic Christians and promote a Eucharistic culture. Christmas pageants do more than simply retell the story of Christ’s birth; they help children embody the Incarnation. They immerse children in the communal life of the parish, teaching them to witness their faith as something alive and actively expressed in communion with others. Without opportunities like these, children might not fully grasp their roles as part of the greater Communion of believers because they have not had the opportunity to practice it.

More than Playing, Embodying: An Example from The Best Christmas Pageant Ever

If you have read this far, it is likely no surprise that, beyond attending Mass each Sunday and participating in a paraliturgical pageant each Advent, another cherished ritual in my family is reading Barbara Robinson’s 1972 classic, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, usually during our annual eight-hour holiday trek to the grandparents’ house. Like most books written and beloved by women, this book gained in popularity because it was passed down from one generation of women readers to the next, including my own. My mother read the book to me, and now, every Advent, I read it to my children. Likely, as readers of this article, you might possess a similar story of a mother, teacher, or other loved one introducing you to this book—a form of women’s devotional, ministerial practice.[2]

This year, over the Thanksgiving holiday, my family took what I would designate as a pilgrimage to see the 2024 remake of this classic. Although its story is set in a Protestant church, I wish every Catholic parishioner would do the same, especially church leaders. The movie highlights spiritual work often overlooked: women’s lay ministries and liturgical devotions. Case in point: while the topic of whether women could become deacons was a hot topic in media outlets regarding Pope Francis’s recent Synod on Synodality, supporting women as Christmas pageant directors certainly was not. Women’s on-the-ground work in parish communities rarely is the source of buzz, yet it is often the source of their own and their children’s encounters with the Lord.[3]

So, you might say I had been waiting in Advent-like anticipation for this movie—and it delivered on all fronts. The story follows Grace Bradley, a middle-aged mom who volunteers to direct the town of Emmanuel’s Christmas pageant after the previous director breaks her leg. The 2024 movie, like the 1972 book it is based on, is narrated by Grace’s daughter, Beth. When the story takes place, Beth is in elementary school, yet the narration comes from her perspective as an adult. Note that in this new adaption which updates the older, we again have a woman narrator not only telling the Christmas story but also passing down the importance of church ministry to the next generation. Spoiler: it is Beth who leads the Christmas pageant in 2024.

Before she herself was pageant director in the movie, however, elementary-school Beth was hopeful, yet not altogether convinced, that her mom would succeed in pulling off a successful Nativity play for the church. She worried both for her mother’s reputation and her own. Your adult eyes might be glazing over here, but I am going to ask you to pause and try to remember being a child for a moment. If you were a churchgoer, or participated in any type of extracurricular activity like sports, how important was success to you, in the choir, on the field, or on stage? How much would your hoped-for success be amplified if your parent were a coach, choir director, or theater teacher? Beth worries her mom’s efforts will fail, especially when the six notoriously unruly Herdman children show up at pageant rehearsal and intimidate the other kids into forfeiting their roles. The Herdmans supposedly showed up for the snacks, yet through Grace (both her name and her actions, intentionally symbolic), God begins to work.

Although the Herdmans wreak chaos at the rehearsals and in the rumor mills outside of it, Grace shows them the love they do not show the other children through their bullying—the love their mother who is never home and their father who abandoned them never showed them either. She shows them undeserved love, God’s love: Grace shows them grace.

“What if the Herdmans ruin this for you?” Beth asks her mom at one point, seeing how much pressure the community is placing on her mom and suffering from sympathetic embarrassment at how difficult running a pageant with kids who had never heard of the Christmas story, and acted accordingly in her mind, must be. “Jesus was born for the Herdmans as much as he was for us,” Grace responds: “We’d be missing the whole point of the story if we turn them away.”

In showing the Herdmans grace, all of those small, unexpected moments of spiritual encounter I mentioned earlier that can happen in pageant ministry, and have happened in my children’s lives, unfold in this movie on grand scale. For instance, Imogene Herdman, the oft-described “tough” oldest sister of the Herdmans becomes enchanted with a picture of Mary she spots hanging in the church foyer. She is transfixed by the Divine Mother’s beauty, sensing—as we all do—that she falls short by comparison, yet feeling irresistibly drawn to her image all the same. While the other Herdmans do not seem to understand why they are participating in the Christmas pageant at all, Imogene, a little like I do each year with my children, insists her family research their roles. To get them excited about their venture, she tells them, “This year we get to be someone else. Live a different life. Become someone new.”

For Imogene, “this year”—this Advent season which marks the new year in the Church’s liturgical calendar—is the one when she finally gets to be “someone else.” That is, through Grace’s ministry, through her teaching about the meaning of the Incarnation in the Christmas pageant, Imogene learns she is someone who deserves love. She also learns how to give love to others. She learns this lesson not solely through a book, even though she notably conducts research at the library, attends worship services, and reads the Bible. Nor does she learn it through a hierarchical, top-down relationship with a minister who preaches to her about how she should act or lectures her on following the catechism perfectly. Rather, she learns it through a blend of structured guidance, drawing on the best aspects of all the approaches mentioned above, combined with a community that Grace artfully cultivates in her ministry—a ministry that involves risk through relational connection.

So, yes, Imogene and Grace gaze at Mary’s portrait together, lost in contemplation, and they discuss the intellectual meaning of the Christmas story: Grace even sets ground rules for the rest of the Herdman children’s behavior with Imogene. During rehearsal, all the children, Herdman and otherwise, interpret scripture as a group, with Grace offering counsel and the children offering heckling alongside some honest querying. Yet what I believe matters most is that Grace nurtures a culture whereby the children themselves begin to explore and enact charity with and amongst each other. (Remember, if you will, my son meeting his unexpected new friend at last year’s Christmas pageant as another, smaller example of this type of ministry in real-life practice.) In the fictional rendering of such a moment, Imogene threatens to quit the play because she feels she could never take on the role of Mary. Importantly, it is not Grace but her introverted daughter Beth who steps in to encourage her to stay in it.

Beth realizes her mom has always been right in standing up for the Herdmans, even when no one else in her younger social group acknowledges it yet. Beth relays to her newfound friend, Imogene, what pageant directors and moms know already: Mary may be beautiful in all those pictures we see of her, but her vocation to the Church is not fluff. Mary is “tough.” Imogene, who is asked to “imagine” (i.e. contemplate) herself in this new role of imitating Mary, already has that one quality in spades. Beth argues she will therefore be a perfect Mary for her mom’s play. Put another way, Mary’s ministry is not ornamental in the Church; it is foundational. Mary’s “yes” to God through her fiat was never easy, after all. She fled to Egypt to protect Jesus from Herod and stood at the foot of the cross watching her son die. Like Imogene does to Beth, she exemplifies tough.

I cried twice during The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. The first was at the end when Imogene, encouraged by Beth, proceeds with the pageant, recalibrating her vision of Mary to include toughness and seeing herself reflected therein. When she holds the babydoll Jesus close during the pageant’s final scene, Imogene is overcome with awe and cannot stop crying. In the 1972 book, Beth as narrator describes this moment as follows: “Christmas just came over her all at once, like a case of chills and fever. . . . As far as I’m concerned, Mary is always going to look a little like Imogene Herdman—sort of nervous and bewildered, but ready to clobber anyone who laid a hand on her baby.”[4] Every Advent, when my family reads this passage in the car, I cry at this scene. Yet in the movie adaptation, it was not just Imogene’s moment in the spotlight that moved me. It was what directly followed that floored me.

In the movie’s concluding scenes, viewers are told what happens to each Herdman child. Imogene’s image and name appear last, a new update to the beloved book. She, the star of this production—our Mary—has gone on to appear in a few films apparently. But the real triumphs in her life? Now, probably the age of those watching the movie and bringing their kids to it, Imogene has run the Christmas pageant herself a few times, inspired by her time as Mary in it. She has five children of her own, and unlike her mother, we are told she is never hard to find when they need her. Like Mary, Imogene has said yes to love. In a movie made in 2024, we see the vocation of motherhood flashed onscreen as an aspirational ideal, one shaped by a little girl’s encounter with the Christmas story in a church where women’s ministry is taken seriously. Like my daughter in the pageant last year when she learned she did not get to be an angel, I did not just cry when I read this about Imogene’s life trajectory. I sobbed.

This brings me to the second moment I cried in the film (but I promise these were only sniffles). While others might have also shed tears during Imogene’s story arc, for me, something simpler also induced tears. During a particularly hectic rehearsal—with fire trucks outside the church and everything falling apart—the church’s pastor asks Grace if the pageant ought to go on. “Will it run smoothly?” he wonders aloud. Grace looks at him honestly and says, “I don’t know.” What struck me was not just her candor but his response. He does not question her judgment, offer suggestions, or interfere to help her make it run more smoothly somehow. Instead, he trusts her leadership and her ministry. My tears at that moment were in gratitude that this quiet, respectful scene would be depicted on film, a moment where Grace’s judgment is deferred to, judgment to take a risk on building community for her church, not knowing if it will succeed.

Humans are complicated, and children perhaps most of all. Women’s ministry often requires a unique kind of bravery—or toughness, if you will—one that Grace’s ministry illustrates. There is no liturgy for running a Christmas pageant, only a chorus of crying children, interfering parents, incompatible schedules, and costumes that do not fit and need mending at the last minute. Tangible rewards are rare; payment and recognition almost never come.

Before her pageant begins—the best Christmas pageant Emmanuel ever saw—Grace addresses her pageant audience, remarking that “I’m not quite sure what’s gonna happen. Maybe that’s not a bad thing. Because Mary and Joseph weren’t so sure either.” This moment captures the heart of Christmas pageant ministry: stepping into all that uncertainty with faith and purpose, with toughness, like Mary. But it also requires something just as vital: the trust of Church leaders to support women to lead, to appreciate when they pass down their liturgical wisdom, and to facilitate providing them support where transformation and tradition can flourish alike.

A Child is Born: Encountering the Sacred in the Christmas Pageant

And here is where the curtains fall on our scene, too. At the end of every Christmas pageant, a tableau is created. You can likely picture it: Mary and Joseph on one side, the manger at the center, shepherds and Wise Men gathered in a loose semicircle, sheep and camels scattered about, and angels hovering just offstage. In my parish, the lights dim, and there is often—though not always—a fleeting moment when every child is exactly where they should be. Not necessarily where they were told to stand, but where they should be. In that pause, something extraordinary transpires.

Theologians would call this moment a kairos moment, a moment of sacred time wherein divine grace interrupts and transforms the ordinary and unveils another dimension. Romano Guardini once poetically described it as occurring during Mass when a “brief portion of time that enfolds eternity.” Examples of kairos time in Mass might occur during the Liturgy of the Word: scripture is not just a story from the past but the living voice of God addressing us now. It also might occur in the consecration of the Eucharist: time bends as Christ’s eternal sacrifice becomes present and tangible, drawing us into the hope of the heavenly banquet.

In the ministry of the Christmas pageant, I believe we are summoned into kairos time, too. When that final tableau takes shape and everyone catches their breath, when a little girl like Imogene stands dazed with awe soaking in her role as Mary, or when my daughter stares at her fluffy sheep hands as though beholding a sacred mystery, in all of these we glimpse eternity searing into the present. These moments are not peripheral to our liturgical life; they are central to it.

At the close of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, Gladys Herdman—described as the youngest and meanest of the bunch—takes center stage.[5] With the conviction of a prophet, she yells out her single line, the only speaking part in the pageant, to anyone who will listen: “Hey! Unto you a child is born!”[6]

I believe eternal truth, kairos time, shines through her bristled yelling at that moment: it shines through in the book for us readers, many of whom who have had these words passed down to us through other readers, and it shines through in the movie for those pilgrims who have seen it, many of whom I believe will pass it down to future generations, watching and rewatching this story, as we do the Nativity play each year in parish halls close to our homes.

In the end, Christmas pageant ministries, and all the stories told and retold about them, real and imagined, invite readers and listeners to encounter the Incarnation and to do so in communion with the experiences of women and children who have for years been willing to risk bringing their journeys onstage alongside the Christ-child’s Advent after Advent, liturgical new year after liturgical new year. In sacrificing their time, they all have invited and continue to invite us to join them in experiencing the Incarnation and perhaps even experience it in kairos time.

After we lead, watch, or participate in these pageants, it becomes our turn, like Gladys, to proclaim the greatest news the world has ever known: Christ is born among us. He dwells here.

He dwells in sanctuaries where Mass is held. In parish halls where pageants are. In playgrounds where Feast Days are discussed. And in bedrooms where lost angel parts are cried over.

Today, in the course of writing this essay, my daughter found out that once again this year she was passed over for her chosen role—the longed-for camel. Instead, she received the only costume left in her size. Even though she is not officially in the choir, she is going to be an angel. Like Gladys, she has been walking around the house all day, proclaiming the birth of Jesus, and no doubt in two weeks, she will be singing, off-key, about the glory of the Incarnation to anyone who will listen in our local Christmas pageant: “Hey!” This includes you, dear reader. He’s born “Unto you, too!”

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