The nativity play. The chance for children everywhere to don teatowels and forget the lines written on cards for them.
I loved being in the nativity. In a really small class and being a bit jazz handsy I got to be Mary one year and the Angel Gabriel the next. Winning! Headlining one year and tinsel wings the next? What could be better? I’ll tell you what could be better. Joseph and the innkeeper playing catch with the baby Jesus and wanging him into the audience for me to go and retrieve. Try styling that one out when you are seven.
I love everything about nativity plays. Kids in Ikea rugs playing sheep. The keen kid being the narrator. The earsplitting rendition of Little Donkey. Then again I’m a sucker for a school carol concert.
The best nativity is Tim Firth’s The Flint Street Nativity. It’s all here, jealous angels, football mad kids, shyness, toilet incidents. When it was first broadcast I loved it. It was turned into a stage play and it was hilarious but there should be “it’ll make you go*” warning. I had to buy a copy and now it’s an annual watch.
A word of warning if you watch it: you will be saying “I’m gonna be Mary” in my native accent in quite a menacing manner for months. Embrace this now.
*I cry at everything. Songs, films, adverts. Everything makes me go. The monkeys now document this. “Did you goed?” “Have you gone?” “Dad, she’s going?” and my personal favourite “careful, Fizzy, that one’s a proper goer”.