Christmas Concert Notes

Last night was the Sunday School Christmas Concert, attended by parents, grandparents, assorted relatives forced to attend, and maybe 5 other people. Our Christmas concerts do not draw huge crowds, although the crowds are getting bigger because we are getting more children. Here are my thoughts:

1. No one fell of the stage. No one has ever fallen off the stage (although a couple of the older kids jumped off at the end despite it being forbidden) but every year I wonder if one of the angels will take one more step backwards and fall off.

2. How can it be over in 30 minutes? Granted, that doesn't count the Pastor's part (he reads a Christmas story to the children and then prays with them) or the candle lit singing of Silent Night. Still, the part I'm responsible for, which requires weeks of work, is over in 30 minutes.

3. I would make it longer, but that would require more work and stress.

4. The shepherds did their part perfectly, and about 2 Scripture readings ahead of when they were supposed to. I think not too many people noticed and we just cut out part of the the Scripture so it all made sense.

5. The young musicians were very good, especially since most of them got the songs a week or two before the performance. Some of them just started learning them this month. I'm going to do that differently next year (well, if I'm organized enough I am). One small pianist made a mistake, said "oops," and started over. It didn't bother her at all.

6. The pastor thought his wife had arranged for candle lighters and she though he had arranged for candle lighters and no one had arranged for candle lighters. What this meant is that someone lit the candle at the front of the church, then they turned out all the lights, then we sang Silent Night in the dark. During the second verse someone finally went up and lit her candle, which got other people going, so we sang the rest by candle light.

7. The same children who could not sit still and pay attention during rehearsal were complete angels during the performance. It might be the audience, and it might be the threat that they wouldn't get treat bags is they didn't behave.

8. Also, while we were getting them costumed, the shepherds would not settle down and behave properly, so Mr C (the grade 3/4 teacher) had a talk with them. He's very good.

9. For the first time, I had a real multitude of the heavenly host. Usually we have a chief angel who is joined by 3 or 4 other angels. I'm not sure how many we had this time, but there were a lot. It was good.

10. Despite being told at least 3 times about the rehearsal, one of the main readers (the older kids do readings, and the main ones are the ones reading Luke 2 because that's when the acting takes place and they have to know when to pause and such) did not show up. Happily I was able to snag her before the program and make sure she knew not to read the angel's lines. Having her at rehearsal would have helped.

11. The readers are given large index cards and write out their parts so they don't have to memorize or bring up their scripts. It works, except that they don't remember to mark the parts that the shepherd or angels are going to say so we have to double check that. Also, one student couldn't read his own writing at the rehearsal. Someone else wrote it out for him before the performance.

12. It was fun, but I'm glad it's over for another year.