The Reason for the Reason

Some people consider Barbara Robinson's The Best Christmas Pageant Ever to be distasteful at best and sacrilegious at worst. I find it to be just the opposite and consider it a blessing to read it annually.

A lot of people are known to say something about remembering "the reason for the season" at Christmastime. Certainly, let's remember the reason for the season:  Jesus Christ. But let us not forget the reason for the reason of the season:  we are all in a fallen state and in need of the healing and atoning power of the Savior. This is why I love this book. It is a stark reminder of the reason for the Reason.

The seeming antagonists of this story are the Herdman children. They are outrageous. They are as bad as kids can get. But you know what? It's not their fault. They were never really tended or taught. If nothing else, this story shows the results of parenting, or a lack thereof. By then end of this book, I always find myself more on the side of the Herdmans, who finally get their first taste of the gospel, than on the side of the prim and proper faithfully church going congregation who would rather not ever have to deal with these juvenile delinquents in any way, shape, or form, than take them under their wings and teach them something.

The narrator's mother inherits the job of directing the annual Church Christmas Pageant. How she handles what she is dealt is admirable. Every time I read this story, I consider her a real hero. After a harrowing first rehearsal, with the non-religious and uncivilized Herdmans as main characters, she thoughtfully tells her husband what happened.

"'Well,' Mother said, 'just suppose you had never heard the Christmas story, and didn't know anything about it, and then somebody told it to you. What would you think?'

"My father looked at her for a minute or two and then he said, 'Well, I guess I would think it pretty disgraceful that they couldn't find any room for a pregnant woman except in the stable.'

"I was amazed. It didn't seem natural for my father to be on the same side as the Herdmans. But then, it didn't seem natural for the Herdmans to be on the right side of anything. It would have made more sense for them to be on Herod's side.

"'Exactly,' Mother said. 'It was perfectly disgraceful. And I never thought about it much. You hear all about the nice warm stable with all the animals breathing, and the sweet-smelling hay--but that doesn't change the fact that they put Mary in a barn. Now, let me tell you...' She told my father all about the rehearsal and when she was through she said, 'It's clear to me that, deep down, those children have some good instincts after all.'"

As you meet the characters of the church congregation, you see someone you know in every one of them. All the faults and failings of humanity are on display here; the book shows both the need for a Redeemer, and it shows the power of the Redeemer and His gospel to change a life. This book easily passes my "best book" test:  it makes me laugh, it makes me think, it makes me cry, and it makes me want to be a better person.

Share the Good News this season and always!