This week my brain is all pageant, all the time. Music, publicizing, script, flow, props, etc. I was a theatre kid, in case you can’t tell, actually I have a BA with a minor in theater arts. I love it all, the storytelling, collaboration, lights, jitters, creativity. For six years now I've been recalling my theatre days each December prepping for our Very Queer Christmas Pageant.
This year, in preparation I watched some of my favorite Christmas movies featuring pageants. In Netflix’s Single All the Way. The main storyline is about Peter, tired of his family judgement of his single relationship status, he convinces his best friend Nick to join him for Christmas and pretend that they’re in a relationship. In typical rom-com fashion his very festive mom, Christmas Carol, sets him up on a blind date with the “perfect” small town guy only for Peter to finally realize that he’s actually been in love with his best friend all along. But the side plot is Aunt Sandy, played by Jennifer Coolidge, and her annual Christmas pageant. Aunt Sandy, the over the top middle-age prima-donna who used to be an actor who was almost on Broadway, goes overboard with her expectations for the children’s pageant.
She is “forced” to take over and play all of the parts because the kids “can’t get the emotions right,” and “how will the performance ever go on?” Nick and Peter, the theatrical gays that they are, step in to save the show while falling deeper in love.
Backstage on opening night, Aunt Sandy's inspiring words of encouragement to the cast sound an awful lot like a prayer Madonna said for her dancers and backup singers before a concert in her 2005 I'm Going to Tell You a Secret documentary.
“I just want us all to go out there and take the people in the audience to another place and inspire them to be better versions of the people that they are already. I thank you all, each and every one of you, for being part of this experience with me. I feel so grateful. I feel so excited. I feel so honored. Let’s go out there and have the best time ever tonight. Be safe, and let’s shine like the brightest lights. Amen.”
Aunt Sandy is a good example of how not to direct a Christmas pageant, please keep me in check. Ha!
Then there is the equally loved and hated, Love Actually and the school pageant cast that includes a whale, an octopus, and, not one, but three lobsters, showing that there is always room in the stable for everyone.
This year there is a new version of Barbara Robinson's classic, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, which I have yet to see. The six Herdman siblings have a reputation for being “the worst kids in the world.” After their dad took off, never to return, their mom works too many jobs to not quite make ends meet, leaving the kids to fend for themselves in a town of white picket fences and pristine church clothes. They show up to Sunday School hearing there will be snacks and end up volunteering to be in the town’s famed Christmas pageant. Aghast and outraged, everyone in town expects the Christmas pageant to be a disaster, but the Herdmans’ lived experience and genuine wonder make the show that much more meaningful. Their performances challenge the town to rethink their understanding of the birth of Jesus and the meaning of Christmas.
After this extensive research, I think our pageant strives to be a combination of all three. A bit of over the top theatrics, a role for everyone (anyone have a lobster costume?), and challenging the normative birth narrative and theology.
If I haven’t already reached out to you and you’d like to have a part in the pageant, let me know we can always add more lobsters, angels, or readers.
Tell all your family, friends, neighbors and coworkers to don their gay apparel and come see it. I think this will be the BEST Queer Christmas Pageant yet!
Details: The Very Queer Christmas Pageant
This Sunday, December 15, we will use the Advent art collection on display at the church as a Visio Divina, a visual meditation and reflection along with creating our own stained-glass-style Shrinky Dink ornaments.
Sunday, December 15
4 pm at the church
Kiddo care
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