The same woman has directed our town’s Christmas pageant for fifty years.
Miss June is eighty-six.
Every December, she casts her great-grandchildren as sheep like clockwork.
This year, at the final bow, the town did something without telling her.
It took the fire department’s ladder truck to pull it off.
The first pageant was in 1974, in the school gym, on borrowed hay.
Three generations of the town have been her angels, shepherds, and sheep.
Some families have supplied four generations.
This year’s show went as usual.
Miss June directed from a folding chair at the end of the bleachers, script in her lap even though she had not needed it since the Bush administration.
Then came the final bow.
The lights went down.
When they came back up, the gym was full.
Six hundred alumni in old costumes.
Grown men in bathrobes and tinsel halos.
A surgeon in angel wings that had fit him in 1988.
Sheep everywhere.
Outside the gym windows, the fire department’s ladder truck raised something over the roofline.
The cardboard star from the 1974 pageant.
The original had burned in a shed fire years earlier.
The firefighters rebuilt it from Miss June’s photographs.
June looked at six hundred wings and one star.
She held her script over her head like a trophy.
“Rehearsals are Tuesdays,” she told them. “Same gym. I’m already casting next year.”
Part 2
Miss June directed the first Christmas pageant in 1974.
The town did not have a dedicated theater, so the school gym became Bethlehem for one evening.
Parents brought hay from farms. The church loaned robes. The school provided lights and folding chairs.
Miss June wrote the script by hand.
She assigned parts according to age, confidence, and the amount of supervision each child required.
The youngest children became sheep.
The older children played shepherds and angels.
A teenager played Joseph because he was tall enough to be seen behind the manger.
Miss June built the cardboard star with help from the shop teacher.
It was painted gold and hung above the stage with fishing line.
The first performance was imperfect.
A sheep wandered toward the audience.
An angel forgot a line.
One shepherd dropped his staff.
Miss June directed from a folding chair near the bleachers and whispered instructions until the story reached its ending.
The audience applauded.
The pageant became an annual event.
Miss June never treated it as a production that belonged to her.
She treated it as a place where the town could see its children growing.
Every December, another child entered the gym wearing a borrowed costume.
Every year, the star came down and was stored for the next performance.
Part 3
The pageant survived changes in the school, the church, and the town.
The gym floor was replaced.
The bleachers were repaired.
A sound system was installed and later replaced.
Miss June remained in the folding chair.
She directed from the side because she believed the children should be the center of the stage.
She knew which child needed a cue and which child needed to be allowed to improvise.
She could identify every sheep by the way they stood.
The costumes changed slowly.
Angels received new wings. Shepherds received better robes. The sheep were sometimes made from blankets, sometimes from white sweatshirts.
The cardboard star remained.
Families returned across generations.
A former shepherd came back as a father and watched his daughter become an angel.
A child who had once played a sheep returned as a nurse wearing a costume for her own child.
Miss June kept photographs of every pageant.
She labeled them by year and arranged them in albums.
The original star appeared above each performance until a shed fire destroyed it.
Miss June saved the photographs.
She did not ask anyone to replace the star.
The pageant continued without it.
She said the story still knew where to look.
Part 4
The town planned the surprise during the pageant’s fiftieth year.
Former cast members organized through messages, letters, and old school directories.
The fire department offered the ladder truck.
The firefighters studied Miss June’s photographs and rebuilt the original star from cardboard, paint, and wood.
They reinforced it so it could be raised safely above the gym.
Six hundred alumni agreed to return.
Some had to borrow costumes.
Some wore the original clothes they had kept in attics.
A surgeon found the angel wings she had worn in 1988.
Men who had once been shepherds arrived in bathrobes and tinsel halos.
Families brought sheep costumes for adults who were now taller than the gym’s stage.
Miss June knew nothing.
The final performance proceeded normally.
Her great-grandchildren entered as sheep.
Shepherds crossed the stage.
Angels sang.
Miss June gave cues from the folding chair.
At the final bow, the lights went down.
When they came up, the gym was filled with former cast members.
The fire department’s ladder truck rose outside the windows.
The rebuilt cardboard star lifted above the roofline.
Miss June stared at it.
Then she recognized the shape from her own photographs.
Part 5
The alumni held their positions while Miss June stood.
Some had gray hair.
Some carried children.
Some wore costumes that had been too small for them decades earlier.
The gym held fifty years of pageants at once.
Miss June raised her script over her head.
The firefighters secured the star above the building.
It was not identical to the original.
The paint was brighter, and the edges were stronger.
But the shape belonged to 1974.
Miss June walked to the center of the gym.
She looked at the six hundred former angels, shepherds, and sheep.
Then she said rehearsals would be Tuesdays.
The town laughed and cried.
The firefighters lowered the ladder truck after the applause ended.
The new star was placed in the school’s storage room beside the costumes.
It will return every December.
Miss June still directs from the folding chair.
Her script remains in her lap, marked with notes no one else can read.
The pageant’s cast continues to change.
Great-grandchildren become sheep.
Shepherds grow into adults.
Angels return with children of their own.
The star hangs above them.
Miss June never needed the town to remember the pageant.
She needed the pageant to keep giving the town a place to return.
Rehearsals are Tuesdays.
The gym is waiting.
Miss June is already casting next year.
