Ruby was very excited to be in the Christmas pageant at church on Sunday afternoon. Since she is in kindergarten her role was a small one, but she took it very seriously. The younger kids were to play animals at the manger scene, and sing the first verse of “Away in a Manger” all by themselves. Ruby the sheep spent the whole week leading up to the event singing the song and baa-ing repeatedly. Like, all the time. Constant baa-ing. Her dedication was…admirable. And admittedly very cute.
What Ruby wanted everyone to know about her character, was that she was going to be playing the black and white sheep. This was due to the fact that they had pieced her costume together from two different sheep outfits, but it had the additional effect of helping her to stand out from the other two sheep which were only white. There was also a leopard, and a unicorn apparently, but she wasn’t worried about being confused with them.
At the dress rehearsal, we were told that our sheep children would go up to the manger to sing their song, and then had the option of either coming back down to sit with their parents, or staying up at the front and hanging out with baby Jesus, so really there was no choice at all. The children were told that if when they stayed up front, they had to be very quiet and mostly still, which they all agreed to, and that was it for the rehearsal.
On the day of the pageant we arrived at church almost late, due to everyone in New England attempting to park in the parking garage at the same time, but Ruby and her mother managed to escape from the car and get sheepified in time, while Edward and I competed in X-Treme Parking 2012. Arriving approximately three seconds before the start of the show, we slipped into the pew beside Ruby and got the camera ready to capture the impending precious childhood moments.
When I heard the bible verse that was Ruby’s cue to go on stage I attempted to get her out of the pew, but she refused to go anywhere until she saw the other sheep go first, so we waited another moment for the other ovine children (plus the leopard and the unicorn) to make their moves. They did, and Ruby took her place with the others for their song. So far so good.
Now, I feel that I need to say here that Ruby really had this melody down prior to the performance. She may have changed keys a few times in the middle of the verse, but the overall tune was quite intact, up until she took the stage. I think this was why, when we watched the video afterwards, Ruby told us that the video was broken, because the song did not sound very good. For some reason, during the actual in-front-of-an-audience singing, Ruby sang the whole thing about a third up from what was being played on the piano. I guess we should have run it with accompaniment at home.
Well, with the song over it was time to crawl back up to the actual manger to commence milling about, with only soft baa-ing. The kids were pretty good up there until the three kings brought up their gifts and left them within reach of the sheep, which was a rookie Magi mistake. Ruby led the expedition to investigate these new additions to the manger scene, and for the rest of the pageant the sheep (and friends) sniffed and pawed at the gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Perhaps myrrh smells like sheep treats, I’m not exactly sure what either of those things do smell like, so it’s possible. When I asked her about it afterwards Ruby told me, “I was playing a curious sheep!”
Once it was all over, the children were encouraged to go back down to the pews to join their parents for the hymn sing. Not wanted to break character, Ruby crawled down the steps in full sheep-mode, right off in the wrong direction. Luckily, that’s why we have adults, so she was quickly set back onto the correct path and crawled up the center aisle to where we were sitting.
The whole thing was, quite clearly, a huge success. Ruby had a great time, and we had a great time watching her. And maybe next year Edward will be a sheep too. Hide your myrrh.