If you read last week’s page – and if you didn’t you missed out big time, because I revealed Kylie Minogue’s mobile number and Bob Geldof’s PIN number – you’ll remember I briefly mentioned the Nativity.
Well as the man who designed the London Eye once remarked “What goes around, comes around.” Because, co-incidentally, just before I started writing this article, I saw something on breakfast TV which astonished me.
And no, it wasn’t Lorraine Kelly managing to get through a whole programme without lying to the soap-actress-of-the-day she seems contractually obliged to converse with every morning, “The top secret plotline you’ve been unable to reveal to me during the last six minutes, sounds really grrreat!”, as she laughs and flaps her hands around in the rigorous interviewing style that will surely one day win her the British equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize.
What I saw on breakfast TV was even more astonishing. A news item stated that in 2014, only one primary school in three put on a traditional Nativity play, complete with two-foot tall shepherds wearing their Dad’s five-foot long dressing gowns and holding plastic lambs borrowed from a local butchers shop.
What added to my astonishment (you’d be astonished at how astonished I get sometimes) was learning that many of the dwindling number of Nativity plays still being put on in schools, don’t feature the angels, the shepherds or three wise men.
Instead, they’re replaced by characters, who, according to the modern mantra ‘Children can more easily relate to’ – like superheroes, aliens….and Elvis!
Does this explain why so many children have no idea of the real reason we celebrate Christmas?
Should we worry that the traditional school nativity play is dying out?
Is there anything we can do to halt its demise?
And am I asking you far too many questions?
A story that, whether you believe it or not, has survived for 2000 years with the same cast of characters, does not benefit from having the shepherds dressed in red & blue Lycra, spinning webs over the manger. Neither does it need a visit from the Three Wise Cybermen. Or the Alien Gabriel.
All it would take for children to ‘more easily relate to’ Mary, Joseph, the baby Jesus, the shepherds, the angels and the three wise men is for someone in the school to teach them the story!
Because, once you become familiar with characters, whether they inhabit a Bible story or an episode of Peppa Pig, they’re much easier to ‘relate to’.
Now I’m going to play the Devil’s Advocate – I’d prefer to play the trombone, but I never learned – and question just how wise the Three Wise Men were. Balthazar, Melchior and Casper brought with them Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh.
What made them think yellow metal, white resin and spice were suitable gifts for a new-born baby?
If they’d only given it a moment’s thought, they would have brought nappies, baby wipes and a changing mat. Oh…and some Peppa Pig pyjamas!