You will all be relieved to hear that SB was not dressed up as the lead singer of Imagination for the nativity play after all. He was however very fetching in a gold lame cloak with a leopard skin sort of affair over the shoulders and a gold crown. He looked much better than the other two Magi and I am not biased at all.
The whole nativity was quite interesting. It was done as part of the carol service in the school's local church, which meant that as we arrived, the three angels were already installed up in the stone pulpit. This also meant that we got a good view of some very bored angels, heads slumped on their arms as they waited for everything to kick off. Not very angelic but quite funny.
The first verse of O Come O Come Emmanuel was sung as a solo by one of SB's classmates. I don't know her but I still got a lump in my throat. As I did when the choir were singing. Something about small-ish children singing makes me slightly soppy.
There was also a brilliant scene between Mary and Joseph and a succession of innkeepers. Joseph asked for room for his pregnant wife, the innkeepers came up with more and more reasons why they could not have one - richer, more important people were coming and so on. Joseph got more and more desparate and irate each time, at one point crying "But my wife is in labour!" I was sort of expecting the next line to be "Look! Her waters have broken for Pete's sake!!!" Sadly it wasn't.
I did the whole thing again the next day for First Born's year group carol service, although being mature Primary 7s, they didn't dress up at all. We then came home, bringing an additional child (friend of FB's) for a visit. There was much running about with toy guns that fire foam darts and yelling. I kept well away, just thrusting food in front of them at the appropriate time. (FB claims to have been laughing so hard during dinner that he snorted 2 beans up his nose. I was fortunately not there so cannot confirm or deny this rumour.)
Then yesterday was a visit to Peebles to take SB to a party at the swimming pool there. FB and I wandered around Peebles in the cold and the dark (the party started at 4pm which might as well be midnight for all the daylight there is available at that time) looking in the shop windows. There are a lot of shoe shops in Peebles. Not quite sure why.
The drive back was a bit hairy as we had very very thick fog here all day and the road between Edinburgh and Peebles is dark and windy. We were so relieved to be back in Edinburgh that we went to the chip shop. Naturally. (Husband was away in Glasgow at a Depeche Mode concert, for he is cooler than we are.)
Now it is Sunday and we are planning to laze about and possibly, maybe put up Scotland's Most Tasteless Christmas Tree. There might even be pictures.
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A British friend of mine wrote on her blog recently about her young son's participation in his school's Christmas play too. What struck me is the difference between the U.K. and the U.S. -- here, the schools pretty much never have plays of the Christmas story. (The separation of church and state.)
ReplyDeleteWhat we have instead are concerts -- children singing lots of winter songs but staying far away from anything religious and, more often now, anything about Christmas itself. It's all too politically-correct.
Don't want to boast but MY son WAS Joseph in his nursery school play. It has not led to stardom in his later life. Looking forward to the tasteless tree pictures. I don't do tasteful trees myself - all that themed stuff. No no, thirty-year-old decorations for us. It's all about tradition.
ReplyDeleteMe, too. Kidlets singing make me all sentimental and teary eyed. Sounds as if your boys' events went well.
ReplyDeleteIt always amuses me to think of you as being north of us, but so much warmer. We get daylight until almost 4:30. But we are up to our butts in snow and more coming tomorrow. Snarl. Shovel, snarl.
My girls were both Mary last year. I have to admit that this year has been a LOT of a come-down.
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