Christmas Pageant Nightmare
by Mary Bridgman
When it was over, I felt like I'd been to hell and back. Plain and simple, it was a Christmas music massacre.
Every year, the faithful at the First Baptist Church in our little Florida town put on a Christmas pageant. Talent was meager and resources scarce, so the results usually left a bit to be desired. However, most local folks didn't have anything to compare it to and assumed Christmas presentations weren't supposed to be orderly or even intelligible. Parents always enjoyed seeing their children decked out in choir robes or participating in the nativity tableau. Everyone looked forward to receiving the bags of candy and fruit that were distributed, without fail, at the conclusion of the fiasco.
Even by our standards, Christmas of 1970 plunged to an abysmal low. I was worried from the time someone suggested we try to make the manger scene more realistic by importing actual livestock to surround the holy family. The preacher delicately pointed out we wouldn't be able to control the animals, which could present a challenging post-pageant clean-up situation, so we opted to go with recorded animal sounds. One of the brethren was a farmer and had a few head of cattle. He wasn't a sound engineer, so one of the teenaged boys, Semi Cowart, offered to go out to his farm and record some cattle noises. Unfortunately, Semi showed up to do his taping when the cows were being branded. The result did not evoke a silent or peaceful night.
Semi Cowart was a tad peculiar, but that could be said of many of our townsfolk. Semi recorded distressed cattle sounds and a few barking dogs to evoke the ambiance of the cattle stall that served as Jesus's birthplace. He had dawdled about getting the recording made, so we didn't get to hear it at rehearsal. I was only 13 years old, but drafted into playing the organ because Eloise Rodgers, our regular organist, had developed sciatica and couldn't operate the foot pedals, not that Eloise had much success with the pedals before she had sciatica.
My sister, Lizzie Mae, was church pianist. Mama was in charge of the beginner choir, for children aged four and five. Daddy and my brother Bean were supposed to play a duet on their fiddles. Bean was not too happy about it--he would have preferred to be a shepherd, or better yet, baby Jesus.
Bean is the baby in our family, and even though he was a pretty big kid at the time, he couldn't quite bend his mind around the fact he had outgrown the role of baby Jesus. He played baby Jesus for a number of years running because we didn't get new babies at our church very often and the Methodists and Episcopalians wouldn't lend us one of theirs. Although the Catholics had plenty of babies, ecumenical relations hadn't progressed to the point that we felt comfortable asking to borrow one.
Lizzie Mae and I ripped through spirited renditions of several of our favorite carols as the congregation gathered in hopeful anticipation of the yuletide program. Just before the service began, we launched into one of our favorite pieces, "Bist Du Bei Mir" by Johann Sebastian Bach. Neither of us had studied German, so we usually referred to the opus as "Blister My Ear"--but it really was pretty, better than anything Eloise Rodgers could play.
We finished "Blister My Ear" with a flourish and waited for the pageant participants to take their places. Mary, Joseph, and the baby assumed their appointed positions, and then the preacher gave Semi the signal to start playing the recorded animal sounds. Predictably, the task proved a bit challenging for Semi, so Brother Mullins went over to assist him. After much mashing of buttons, the tape had started to roll. I was braced for less-than-pleasant mooing, having been informed of the circumstances of Semi's recording, but nothing could have prepared me for the sound that reverberated loudly over the speaker. It was the unmistakable guitar intro to Daddy's version of Woody Guthrie's "Talking Blues." I stared at Semi in horror. He must have mixed up the animal sounds tape with the tape recording he made at the community talent show.
"Talking Blues" isn't obscene or anything, but it's a bit off color and certainly not appropriate church fare. Daddy sat in stunned disbelief. Mama decided to take action and stood the beginner choir to try and drown out Semi's recording with their singing. She was just getting the children lined up in choir formation when Daddy's good-natured nasal twang resonated throughout the building in a slow, rhythmic patter, "Standin' in the corner by the mantelpiece, I'm standin' in the corner by a bucket of grease. Greased my feet with a little axel grease, went slidin' up and down that mantelpiece ..."
Mama yanked the beginners into place and raised her arms to lead them in song. "Huntin' matches, second-hand chewin' tobacco, cigarette butts, stuff like that," continued to blare from the tape player as Brother Mullins struggled to turn it off. Mother lowered her arms to signal the children to sing, but nothing came out of their mouths. Small wonder--they might be kids, but they knew "Talking Blues" wasn't supposed to be playing while they were singing "Sleep Little Jesus."
Brother Mullins finally got the tape to stop and Mama tried again. By that time, she was so rattled she forgot the first word of the lullaby and sang loudly, "Jesus the Mother sings to her child ..." Even the children knew Mary was the one who did the singing, not Jesus. Nevertheless, Mama soldiered on and made a strong finish.
After the beginners were seated, Daddy was still shell-shocked so we had to play the next carol without him. Bean finally got him standing by the time we were ready to start "O Little Town of Bethlehem." The shepherds missed their cue and Brother Mullins had to leave Semi to his own devices, go outside, and round them up. The shepherds reluctantly put out their cigarettes and ambled inside.
The next carol on the program was "We Three Kings." Polecat Mullins, Possum Johnson, and my Uncle Buzzard Thomas had been recruited to play the kings. Uncle Buzzard was substituting for Peter Yost, who had come down with the measles. I wasn't supposed to know it, but I could tell Uncle Buzzard was nursing a hangover from the night before. Polecat was poking Possum in the behind with his jar of frankincense, which looked suspiciously like Avon cream sachet. Possum was caught off guard by the poke and dropped his bar of gold, which was actually a brick painted yellow. It landed on Buzzard's foot. Buzzard managed to stifle a yelp and took a swig out of his bottle of myrrh.
The kings eventually assembled around the baby Jesus and it was time for the adult choir, which was seated on the platform in front of me, to sing. Mrs. Althea Worley, a woman of ample proportions, was choir director. She lumbered to her position on the dais, stood the choir, and nodded at me to begin the introduction. I played the opening strains of "Oh Holy Night" as Mrs. Worley turned away from me to face the choir. Unfortunately, someone had repositioned the dais after rehearsal and I couldn't see her baton in order to ascertain her tempo. It was completely obscured by the loose flesh hanging like curtains from the bottom of her arms. To make matters worse, the folds of skin were shaking back and forth in an impossibly random rhythm. I couldn't hear the choir well because the loft was recessed in an alcove and the acoustics were poor. Hopelessly adrift on a sea of musical disaster, I cast a hopeful glance over toward Daddy and Bean, who were sawing bravely on their fiddles. I tried to follow along as best I could, but I'm pretty sure the choir finished several measures before Daddy, Bean, and me. I don't think any of us were in the same key by the time it was over.
At that point, Mrs. Worley seated the choir, and then Daddy and Bean nodded at Lizzie Mae to play the opening bars of their duet, "What Child Is This?" which is traditionally played to the tune "Greensleeves." They played sweetly in harmony, and I began to relax a little and enjoy the music.
Unfortunately, things began to fall apart once again when a gust of wind blew through an open window--Christmases in our little Florida town were frequently warm. The blast sent their sheet music flying off the music stand. Mama rushed forward to collect it but repositioned it on the stand upside down. I didn't have to be a lip reader to understand Bean's unprintable exclamation. Daddy gave him a stern look, helped Mama right the pages, tapped Bean on the head with his bow, and made him start the piece again.
We sang a few more carols and then Mrs. Worley turned to the choir's final anthem. Very few of the choir members were trained musicians, but Mrs. Worley had gamely decided to attempt "The Hallelujah Chorus" from Handel's Messiah. Lizzie Mae and I were more than a little challenged by the accompaniment and had spent quite a few hours rehearsing it together. I knew I would be able to hear the piano better than the choir, so I was hopeful at least Lizzie and I would finish at the same time. We plunged into the opening bars and miraculously managed to keep tempo with Mrs. Worley.
I love "The Hallelujah Chorus," even when it's being slaughtered by a group of rank amateurs. It's impossible to miss the sweeping grandeur of it. I found myself transported, even as my fingers struggled to find the proper notes. The strains of the choir swelled gloriously, "... and He shall reign forever and ever. King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Hallelujah!"
The final chord had hardly ceased to reverberate when the glorious mood was rudely dispelled by another verse of, what else, "Talking Blues": Out in the wildwood sittin' on a log; My finger on the trigger, my eye on a hog. Pulled that trigger, that gun went zip; Jumped on that hog with all my grit. Eatin' hog eyes, chitlins', stuff like that."
