My Nativity Fiasco

During the past few months I built a puppet theater in my house. At Thanksgiving my grandsons put on a delightful puppet show with knights, a fairy horse mother, and a damsel in distress. I’m still chuckling over it. There are three young grandsons (ages 4, 5 and 7) here for Christmas and last night I helped them do a puppet show of the Nativity. The rehearsal went fairly well. Changing puppets every other sentence from angels to shepherds to wise men was tricky, but we managed it. Then we invited all the adults in to watch the show.

It started off well. The angel announced the news to Mary and then to Joseph, but when the donkey appeared and Mary hopped on for the ride things began to fall apart. A little laughter from the audience sent my young puppeteers off and the next thing I knew Joseph kept kissing Mary, the sheep were attacking the shepherds. and no one could remember their lines. In short, my well intentioned Nativity turned into a comedy.

A few years ago this would have devastated me. It didn’t last night. The Truth is that children are easily diverted. The Truth is that when funny things happen people laugh. The Truth is that everyone enjoyed the attempt, and even though it didn’t have a reverent feel about it, the message was still there. The Truth is that even though they weren’t exactly on task, they got the message that this is something very important to me. The Truth is that even though it didn’t turn out how I would have liked it to, because I didn't get all bent out of shape about the way it was going the good feelings were preserved and it is those good feelings that my grandsons will remember.

Once again I learned that when you take what comes and love it instead of fretting about it, everything turns out all right in the end.