rivka

I think we're mostly done with our Christmas shopping. Whew. I confess that I wasn't really feeling it this year. I think we've done wonderfully well for Alex, but for most of the other people on my list I have felt much less inspired than usual.

Alex is getting a preschool digital camera from Santa. We're giving her moose-shaped animal slippers, Little House in the Big Woods paper dolls, a set of tiny plastic pirates (she's been playing pirates a lot lately), and the game Candyland. Does that seem like too much? It seems like a lot, but it adds up to less than $100.

We went to the mall today to get the last things on our list. I had casually mentioned to Alex that sometimes one of Santa's helpers is at the mall and that kids can sit on his lap and talk to him. She's shy enough that I didn't want to give it a lot of build-up or put pressure on her to sit on his lap, but she was enthusiastic about the idea. And despite my carefully-laid groundwork about "Santa's helpers," as soon as she caught a glimpse of him she absolutely, positively believed that he was the real Santa.

He was a nice guy. The whole setup was designed to sell expensive photo packages, and I wasn't sure what kind of reception we would get when we said Alex just wanted to meet Santa. But he held her on his lap and chatted with her for two or three minutes. He told her that the last time he saw her she was fast asleep, thanked her for the cookies we'd left out, asked if she wanted anything in particular for Christmas, and (when she was tongue-tied) promised to pick out a special surprise just for her. He was really sweet. And the beard was real, which is not a feature I remember from my own childhood visits to Santa. I was very pleased, and so was Alex.

While we were at the mall, we bought her a little Nativity set. With the Christmas pageant and all, she's been deeply interested in the story of Baby Jesus. She's had an endless appetite for Christmas carols, and she has frequently suggested, "Let's put on a play. Mom can be Mary, Dad can be Joseph, Niblet can be baby Jesus, and I can be an angel!" So when we saw this little ceramic Nativity set on sale for $2.99, we had to buy it.

She played and played with it. She started by acting out the Christmas story in a fairly traditional way, but a while later we heard a shout from the playroom: "Mary to the rescue!!" When Michael went in, he saw this:

That's Mary at the wheel of the fire truck. Perched high on the ladder, still in the manger, is Baby Jesus. What do you suppose the religious significance of this is?

Today was also our second Christmas pageant rehearsal. This rehearsal was late getting started - I think I'd better send a reminder e-mail about punctuality before the next one. The woman who volunteered to help the kids with their singing (Lee) was there with her guitar, and she led the whole group through "The Friendly Beasts" to start us off. Then we split up into groups. Lee took the big kids' chorus aside. Another mom took the doves off to practice their part, and my teenage assistant director Emily and I stayed with the actors.

Emily warmed the kids up, and then we blocked out the actions in a more-or-less collaborative way. Honestly, the play doesn't call for much complicated blocking. (I wrote it that way on purpose.) We read through the scenes acting them out. My Donkey is going to be just wonderful - she's got a great expressive delivery, and speaks slowly and clearly. The other animals need to speak twice as loudly and twice as slowly, but are otherwise doing well. I was pleased to see that one already had half her lines memorized. We talked about places where the audience might laugh, and waiting for them to do so.

Then we brought the whole group together and ran through the whole thing: the chorus singing verses of "The Friendly Beasts," the actors speaking and acting out their parts, and the little kids flying onstage when it was time for the doves to appear. We even practiced bowing at the end. Everything is coming together nicely. It's going to take some practice to coordinate the singing and the acting, so I think we probably shouldn't split up much anymore. But I'm not sure we need to - the kids all stayed very well-focused when we ran through the whole thing, even the preschoolers. They all just seem to be so into it. Yay!

For our next rehearsal (Sunday morning), I've asked the actors to have their lines memorized. We'll work on: smooth transitions between the carol verses and acted scenes, speaking loudly and slowly, the little kids knowing what to do, and remembering the blocking (such as it is). Then we'll have one final dress rehearsal on Monday night, and the performance is a week from Wednesday. Yikes! And yet also: How wonderful!