CHRISTMAS PAGEANTRY ~ by Jeff Tryon
The old white wooden church is gone now, but when I was growing up in Brown County, my family attended Unity Baptist up on Spearsville Road. When Christmas rolled around, the traditional holiday observances included a Christmas pageant of some sort performed by the youth of the church.
I can still recall these earliest forays into the dramatic arts, clad in a bathrobe costume with a towel for a headpiece, nervously clutching the small strip of paper with my one line on it.
“ Let us go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.”
We were baby boomers, and there were plenty of kids to go around, so each kid would only get to say one line of the roughly 20 Bible verses containing the Christmas story. Usually, you got one Bible verse, but if it was a
54 Our Brown County • Nov./ Dec. 2025
particularly long verse, it might be split among more than one performer.
Parents sat on the edge of their pew, hoping and praying that their child would not be the one to forget the lines or, heaven forbid, decide to improvise.
Probably my earliest memory of being on stage was standing there in the semi-dark in the front of the church with everyone in the congregation looking at me and someone on the front row whispering to me— I assume, prompting me with the line I was supposed to have memorized. It’ s all different when you’ re standing up there in front of everybody.
These productions were not exactly artistic triumphs, but each parent got to see their child shine in the glow of the classic nativity scene: a stable with Mary, Joseph, a doll in a manger, shepherds, angels, and wise men.
I now know that this is a little Christmas misunderstanding which we indulge in for the