“Why do I do this?” the children’s director asked herself after the pageant rehearsal went badly. She thought back to the Christmas long ago when she was dressed as Mary with a dish towel wrapped around her head. Smiling, she recalled how she first felt her heart become tender and open to the Savior whose birth they celebrated. “I guess I do know why I do it,” she sighed. “I just wish it were as simple as it was back then.”

The night of the program came. Watching the children march onto the platform, she realized that Christmas is still simple. The music and set decorations may have grown more elaborate, but Christmas is still the children gathered in a church singing about a Savior who was born on Christmas night.

And maybe, just maybe, through the music and the drama of a Christmas pageant at church, the children are feeling the first spark of Christmas in their hearts.

Anonymous (not a Christ Church director!)

from Everything I Need to Know About Christmas I Learned from Jesus; 1998 David C. Cook Publishing Company