Henry Plays God
2006/2008

Henry is no angel. He happily admits he’s not the teacher’s pet. He and his best friend Nathan, with the perfect logic of seven year olds, rate themselves as ‘the fourth or fifth worst boys’ in their Year 2 class.

So it came as a surprise to Henry when Mrs McMurtrie told him he would be God in the Christmas nativity play. She announced it to the whole class, which was hard for Henry. He quickly checked the reactions of his friends, and of the boys he would like to be his friends. Did they approve? He thought about saying ‘no’, but you don’t say ‘no’ to Mrs McMurtrie.

Henry felt proud, and scared. God had a big part in the play. It was God who had to command the star to guide the Wise Men to Bethlehem, choose the animals to share Jesus’ stable and the shepherds to do the adoring. He hoped Nathan would get the part of the sensible star, the one Mrs McMurtrie said God would choose to do the guiding. But Nathan became the giraffe instead, and didn’t even get to share the stable because his neck was too long to fit through the door.

So tonight, in the week before Christmas, the junior school is performing the nativity and Henry plays God. He wears a gold cloak and sits on a big throne, from where he can see the whole audience. Even through the bright lights shining right in his eyes he can tell the hall is packed. He wonders where mum, dad and his little brother are. It is hot and his nose itches.

Mr Jones the principal stands on the second step and claps in the usual way to quieten everybody down. He says something and then vanishes. The music starts and everybody looks at Henry. Slowly he stands and begins to speak…

Henry is among thousands of young children throughout the country who, this week and next, are renewing one of the oldest and fondest Christmas traditions – the school concert. Raise your hand if you never took part in a school concert. Just as I thought…

Do you remember those Christmas concerts? Waiting excitedly in the classroom until it was our turn to be marched to the hall through the twilight of a warm summer evening. Putting on cardboard masks, cowboy outfits or a pair of animal ears. Clutching a sword or a recorder. Standing at the side of the stage while teachers rushed about, moving wooden forms and ‘shushing’ everyone out of habit.

Then the performance. An animal pageant one year, a medley of Christmas songs the next, perhaps an original musical written by a talented beginning teacher or a play from the School Journal.

Most or our memories of school are quickly, blessedly, erased after we depart. Maths and spelling lessons are swiftly forgotten (though their outcomes, hopefully, linger). Good teachers and bad merge over time into a single darkening image. Classmates occasionally become life-long friends, but more often vanish into fragments: this one gave you a Chinese burn, that one shared a detention, the other kissed you behind the bikesheds – or did you just wish they had?

But often the memory of the Christmas concert endures. Even if we forget the details we recall the excitement that ran like a thread through rehearsals and performances, right to the moment when we snuggled into our beds late after the show, filled with jelly and ice cream, wrapped in warm words of praise from our parents and the promise of a half-day off tomorrow.

These memories remain powerful, I think, because they are memories of power. The concert is, for many a child, their first experience of being the centre of attention, of being in control. Standing on that stage, even if terrified, we instinctively sense we have the audience in our hands. For the duration of our performance we can make those grownups laugh or cheer or be silent. We can make them proud or disappointed. We can scatter their emotions this way and that, like straws in our hands.

At Christmas we celebrate the birth of a child who truly became the centre of attention. Christ exhorts us to seek our salvation in the example of children. Their innocence, zest for life and faith in their own essential goodness reminds us that we are divine and joyous beings.

Even Henry understands that we can never really play God. There is much in the world and even in our own lives over which we have no control. But at Christmas, when we celebrate a child’s birth, let’s remind ourselves that if we keep alive the child within us we may yet become the perfect creatures God intends us to be.

Happy Christmas.