Saturday 21 November 2009

Christmas at School...

With now only 4 weeks and 6 days till Christmas it is the time of year that mum’s love, dad’s hate and children loathe… The school Christmas play season. The time of the year when kid’s all around are expected to don crap costumes and act out a poorly written story with generally little or no resemblance to Christmas.

The Christmas play was probably my second most loathed thing about school - closely following sports day (see entry Sports at School…). Although having said that, it was still probably more fun than the carol concert. So that might make it my third most loathed thing?

Amazingly I only took part in one nativity play in my whole school life - although luckily I was saved the humiliation of looking like a tit with a tea towel on my head, and just had to sing as part of the choir - the rest were a variation on a theme. Crap stories with a vague resemblance to something Christmassy!

I only remember a couple, but in one I seem to remember being one of Santa’s elves and had to basically sit next to Santa, not saying anything, but occasionally skipping round in a circle! The second Christmas play I remember was at junior school and I was something called a Tomte - I just looked on Wikipedia and they do actually exist apparently. I was one of many of these “mythical Scandanavian creatures” who was asleep in a cave, which got attacked by trolls - which my brother was one of and basically consisted of older kids wearing rugby shirts and socks on their heads, whilst carrying a spade. I don’t remember much more than this other than my part seemed to consist of being asleep on the stage one minute and then being kidnapped by a troll… Once again a massive part for me to play. I still question what this has to do with Christmas though and Wikipedia doesn’t seem much help other than to suggest a Tomte is not happy and will cause mischief if he does not get his porridge on Christmas night! But I don’t recall anything like that happening…

I would love to know where some of these stories get thought up… I imagine somebody is sat in a room thinking “I know, lets get the older kids to wear socks on their heads and the younger ones to wear rubbish paper elf ears and miners costumes - that will be great”… Looking back the costumes are always the best bit about the Christmas play, or do I mean the worst bit… They are so pathetic and simple it is almost laughable:

Mary - blue dressing gown, white tea towel on head, pillow up front - although these days you probably just get one of the pregnant kids to do it, unless it is the year 2 play when that is probably not a possibility…
Joseph - white dressing gown, darker tea towel on head;
Angels - white dress, crappy £2 wings and multicoloured halo from Woolworths (see, where are kids going to buy their nativity outfits now…);
Shepherd - white blanket/dressing gown, Grandads walking stick, tea towel on head;
Wise men - stripey dressing gowns, tea towel on head;
Sheep - the small kids dressed in white with cotton wool ears and a pink nose!

You can see where I am going, the nativity costumes are all two basic components, a tea towel on the head and a dressing gown - is that really what they wore in those days?? I have a theory though, buy stocks in kitchen shops before December. They will boom massively around Christmas when parents are kitting their kids out in Biblical clothing… The other costumes were just as bad though. Next time you are at a Christmas play look at the costumes, it looks like the kids have been put on a cart and wheeled through Oxfam… Only if anything has actually fit when they have tried it on, it has gone straight back and swapped for something about ten sizes too big…

I say I hated the carol concerts, but this is a lie… I hated them every year except one. In year 6 I was deemed the second best student user of an overhead projector, which meant I was part of the projector team for the carol concert! My role was basically to pass the overheads at the right time to the guy who was better than me at operating the projector! But, it did mean I didn’t have to sing, which as far as I was concerned was a result. I have no idea whether the carol concerts still take place in our political correct world, but if they don’t the kids of today can thank their lucky stars… In your own time in the evenings having to sing in front of everybody’s parents is about as much fun as getting your scrote caught in a laundry mangle… I have no idea who thought it was a good idea, but it always sounds terrible and I certainly didn’t enjoy it!

On the side though, it did mean it was nearly Christmas, which meant lessons consisted of making paper snowflakes and Christmas trees during lessons, which lets be fair is fun by anybodies books! I would much rather be doing that right now than trying to avoid writing about engine cooling systems! In fairness Christmas at school was good fun, from the Christmas dinner featuring wafer thin turkey microwaved, to the Christmas party on the last day, but dear me, the Christmas play and carol concert was and I imagine in most cases is, an embarrassment to the kids and a complete ball ache for everyone involved.

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