PAGEANTS OF CHRISTMAS PAST

 

Note:
I wrote this several years ago and have been inflicting it upon my readers every holiday season since.
                                                               Jon


I never look back on those events with undiluted fondness. Through the long distance of years I still regard them with a twinge of humiliating disdain. I'm talking about the obligatory school Christmas pageants. Where innocent children are compelled to make fools of themselves on stage in front of parents, classmates, and faculty.

The only positive aspect I can ascertain is that those childhood days were simple, uncomplicated days - - when no one was offended by Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and front yard nativities were proudly displayed without any concern about being confiscated by the Neighborhood Manger Police.
It seemed to be a Norman Rockwell America.

Scene One:
Glendora, California. The Gordon Elementary School. Second Grade. I was six years old.

My teacher Mrs. Eisendise (whom I called Ice and Dice) came up with the grandiose idea of staging several scenes from Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker ballet. I wasn't in the least smitten by her plan, but I did fall in love with the music. In fact, I forced my mother to buy a recording of it. A double LP album in those primitive days.

For reasons unbeknownst to me, I was chosen to be one of the waltzing flowers in (of course) the Waltz of the Flowers. My humiliation was lessened only by the fact that numerous other boys were also sentenced to being flowers in Eisendise's delusional bouquet.

 Four boys who became unwilling participants in Mrs. Eisendise's flower bouquet. I'm the one in the striped shirt.

The stage scenery was quite elaborate for a less than minor production. A serene rural backdrop with cardboard trees and shrubs. I can't exactly remember the flower costume that I wore, which - from a Freudian point of view - is probably a good thing. I can't attribute it to any pansy complexes I might have acquired twenty years later.

It's a fleeting thought. Don't ponder it for too long.

The dance started out splendidly but rapidly deteriorated. The music somehow seemed to be going faster than our twirls and leaps. In time, it completely resisted our efforts. Disharmony and vertigo ensued and soon it was every flower for himself. We had completely abandoned the music and were simply fighting to stay alive. I'm not sure which flower knocked down a cardboard tree, but trees suddenly began toppling like dominoes. Petals were crushed and the curtain was mercifully pulled. We waltzing flowers were far from a success.

If nothing else, the entire ugly ordeal robbed me of any future desire to have a career on the stage.

Scene Two:

Covina, California. The Charter Oak School. Third Grade. I was seven years old.  

My teacher Mrs. Rollins was unusually weird. She had heavily dyed black hair - parted severely in the middle - thick tortoise shell glasses, a generous  application of rouge, and more red lipstick than Bette Davis wore on a bad day.

Mrs. Rollins also had a very strange habit. At the end of every school day, she had the class line up by her desk and would kiss each of us goodbye. Sometimes I was able to duck out and avoid being branded by her crimson lips.

Fortunately this caused no known ill effects on my future psyche - - although to this day I still become completely impotent at the sight of tortoise shell rimmed glasses. 

Mrs. Rollin's Christmas pageant was no less unnerving than Eisendise's waltzing flowers had been. I and two other boys were chosen to sing We Three Kings (I never figured out whether we were technically kings or wise men).

Rollins handed us the lyrics and demanded that we learn them within a week. I still don't know where the hell she got those lyrics, but I'd never seen so many pages for one Christmas song in my entire life. There were at least ten choruses.

We three boys wore cardboard crowns, makeshift capes, and had to carry empty gift boxes wrapped in Christmas paper. The pageant went off without a hitch, until we began singing....

We three kings of Orient are, bearing gifts we traverse afar...

we sang....and sang....one excruciatingly long chorus after another.....over and over.....and....over....

The audience would begin to applaud - hoping it was finally the end - and we'd suddenly sing another chorus.

It was the longest frickin' song in Christmas pageant history. I was seven years old when we started. I think I was pushing thirty by the time we finally finished.

Despite trying for years to expunge the event from my mind, I can still remember every chorus and every word from that ghastly song.