The+Best+Christmas+Pageant+Ever

= = The Herdmans are the worst kids in the history of the world. They lie, steal, smoke cigars, swear, and hit little kids. So no one is prepared when this outlaw family invades church one Sunday and decides to take over the annual Christmas pageant.

=The Characters= **Bob Bradley**, the Father of Charlie and Beth. Beth is the narrator for the play. He is also married to Grace who ends up taking over the pageant. He doesn’t like to go to the pageant every year and it is a struggle to make him.
 * Grace Bradley**, the Mother of Charlie and Beth. She ends up taking over the Christmas pageant when Mrs. Armstrong breaks her leg.toc


 * Beth Bradley**, the narrator. Beth leads the audience through the play.


 * Charlie Bradley**, Beth’s little brother. Charlie is the person who told the Herdman’s about the food at Sunday school. He’s also the person that said that his favorite thing about Sunday school was “No Herdmans!”


 * Ralph Herdman** **,** the oldest of the Herdman children. He ended up playing the part of Joseph in the pageant.


 * Imogene Herdman**, the oldest Herdman daughter. She ends up playing Mary in the pageant. Imogene is in the same class as Beth. She picks on anyone who speaks up in class. She is the one who sneaked into the health room and copied down all of the weights of the children in her class. Then she would blackmail the students with the information. The first time she came to Sunday school she stole money out of the collection basket.


 * Leroy Herdman**, the next oldest Herdman. He ends up being one of the Wise Men in the pageant. He’s the one that Charlie told about there being food at Sunday school. Charlie told him to get Leroy to leave him alone since he was always taking Charlie’s food.
 * Claude Herdman**, another of the Herdman children. He is also one of the Wise Men in the pageant. He is the one that brought the wild cat to show-and-tell in 1 st grade and scared the whole class.


 * Ollie Herdman**, another of the Herdman children. He is the final one of the Wise Men in the pageant.


 * Gladys Herdman**, the youngest Herdman. She plays the Angel of the Lord in the Christmas pageant.


 * Alice Wendleken**, always used to be Mary in the Christmas pageant until Imogene bullied her into letting her do it. She’s a friend of Beth’s. She always played Mary because of how smart and neat she is.


 * Mrs. Armstrong**, directed the Christmas pageant every year until she broke her leg and had to convince Grace Bradley to do it. She is very bossy, loves to give other people orders and is the head of every organization she belonged to.


 * Elmer Hopkins**, the Reverend’s son. He always plays Joseph in the pageant.

=Chapter Summaries=

Chapter 1
The Herdmans lie, steal, smoke cigars, talk dirty, hit little kids, cuss their teachers, take the name of the Lord in vain and set fire to things. They accidentally burn down Fred Shoemaker’s old toolhouse while playing with a chemistry set, which Leroy stole. They hang around to watch and to steal the doughnuts brought for the firemen.

The fire chief hopes the neighborhood kids will learn a lesson about playing with fire. The Herdmans learn that where there’s fire, there’s free doughnuts.

There are six Herdmans—Ralph, Imogene, Leroy, Claude, Ollie, and Gladys—living over a garage. The sign in their yard says “Beware Of The Cat.”

Claude Herdman takes the cat to his first grade class for Show-and-Tell. It scratches kids, trashes the classroom, and eats two pet mice brought by another student. The hysterical first graders have to go outside and have recess the rest of the day.

The Herdmans are moved from grade to grade through Woodrow Wilson School. They are never held back a grade. No teacher is crazy enough to have two Herdmans in her classroom.

Imogene Herdman manages to learn secrets about her classmates and uses the information to engage in blackmail or name calling. She uses her skills to become the owner of an expensive charm bracelet, a pocketbook, and ten cents a week. Thanks to Imogene, the other students call Alice Wendleken “Cooties” for a year. If she doesn’t know a secret about someone, Imogene makes one up. It is useless trying to tease the Herdmans because they don’t care about the things they do. It doesn’t matter to them their father climbed on a railroad train and disappeared when Gladys was two years old.

Mrs. Herdman works double shifts at a shoe factory and isn’t home much. She refuses help from social services that would allow her to work one shift and spend more time with the children. The Herdmans pretty much look after themselves—the older one looking after the one younger than him or her. Gladys, the youngest, is the meanest of all the Herdmans.

Everyone figures the Herdmans are headed straight for hell by way of the state penitentiary until they get themselves mixed up with the Christmas pageant.

Chapter 2
Usually, Mother’s only involvement with the Christmas pageant is forcing her daughter and her son to be in it and making her husband go see it.

Everything changes when Mrs. George Armstrong falls and breaks her leg two weeks before Thanksgiving. In delegating Mrs. Armstrong’s many duties to other people, Mother gets stuck with the Christmas pageant.

The Christmas pageant script is always the Christmas story—the inn, the stable, the shepherds, the star. The costumes never change and neither does the casting, including the minister’s son as Joseph and Alice Wendleken as Mary.

Mother says the Christmas pageant is a tradition, and she doesn’t plan to change anything. Children look forward to Sunday as a day of rest at church away from the Herdmans. Nobody thinks about them in connection with the Christmas pageant.

Charlie changes things for his mother and the Christmas pageant when he tells Leroy Herdman to go ahead and take his dessert because he gets all he wants in Sunday school. The very next Sunday, the Herdmans come to Sunday school looking for refreshments. They stay when they see the food that is being collected as a Thanksgiving present for the Orphans Home. Imogene takes money from the collection basket.

At the end of the morning, Mrs. Grady announces to each class that rehearsals for the Christmas pageant will begin the next week. The Herdmans are big moviegoers, and Imogene is interested.

Chapter 3
Mrs. Armstrong tries to continue running things by calling Mother from the hospital and giving her instructions as how the play should be cast and how to go about it. By Sunday, when work is to begin, Mother is already sick of the whole thing.

After services, the children file into the back of the church and listen to Mother’s presentation of the pageant plans. She takes time to assure one particular child that nobody will get sick and ruin everything.

Mother describes the kind of person needed to play Mary, but Alice Wendleken sits looking at the door when Mother asks for volunteers. Imogene raises her hand and announces that she wants to be Mary and Ralph wants to be Joseph.

Mother asks for other volunteers, but there are none. Elmer Hopkins, who is always forced to take the part of Joseph, doesn’t speak up. Imogene has made various threats against Alice, including sticking a pussy willow so far down her ear that it will sprout, so she keeps her mouth shut as well.

The only volunteers for Wise Men are Leroy, Claude, and Ollie Herdman. Gladys, the only Herdman left, gets the part of the Angel of the Lord, sending the shepherds into a panic. Mother has to guarantee that Gladys will not hit anybody.

For two or three days Mother gets phone calls and advice about how to remove the Herdmans from the pageant. The final straw comes when someone tells Mrs. Armstrong what is happening and she nearly falls out of her hospital bed. She accepts the blame, and declares it would not have happened if she had been in charge.

Angered by Mrs. Armstrong’s words, Mother declares that she is going to produce the best Christmas pageant anybody every saw, and she is going to do it with the Herdmans. Reverend Hopkins puts an end to the row by reminding the complainers that Jesus said “Suffer the little children to come unto me.” That included the Herdmans. Rehearsals start the next Wednesday.

Chapter 4
The Herdmans are late for the first rehearsal, and they immediately liven things up by revealing that they know nothing about the Christmas story. Mother reads it to them from the Bible.

Ralph Herdman announces to the whole group that “being great with child. .” means pregnant. Alice says she had better tell her mother because she is not supposed to talk about people being pregnant.

When she hears the part about no room at the inn, Imogene declares “My God!. . . Not even for Jesus?” Hearing swearing in church causes Alice to purse her lips. Mother explains that the baby Jesus was placed in a manger because there was no bed. The Herdmans relate to the family’s plight since Gladys was put in a bureau drawer instead of in bed with Ollie, who didn’t like her.

Hearing that Jesus was also wrapped in “swaddling clothes,” Imogene complains that they “tied him up and put him in a feedbox,” and Child Welfare didn’t intervene. The passages about the Angel of the Lord draws a “Shazam” from Gladys, who flings her arms and smacks the kid next to her. The Herdmans learn that the three Wise Men were kings who brought cheap presents. They are especially interested to hear about Herod and his plans to have the baby Jesus killed. They want to know all about him. When Mother explains that there is not a Herod in the pageant, the Herdmans want somebody to be Herod so they can beat up on him.

The Herdmans get involved in the story, wanting a bloody end to Herod, worrying about Mary having her baby in a barn, and calling the Wise Men a bunch of dirty spies. They leave arguing about what Joseph should have done to the inn or the innkeeper.

Chapter 5
When Mother asks him what he would think of the Christmas story if he knew nothing about it and heard it for the first time, Father duplicates the Herdmans’ reaction. Mother says she believes the Herdmans have some good instincts deep down inside. After all, they picked the right villain.

The Herdmans go to the library to look up Herod. Imogene tells Miss Graebner, the librarian, they want library cards so they can read about Jesus. Miss Graebner says she might as well retire because she has heard everything there is to hear.

The Herdmans can’t stand the fact that Herod died in bed of old age, and they want to rewrite the pageant and hang Herod at the end. They are mad about the evil king, but they don’t quit the pageant as a lot of people hope they will.

Throughout the rehearsals, Alice Wendleken is taking notes about Gladys drinking communion wine, Imogene Herdman smoking cigars in the girls’ room, stealing crayons from Sunday school cupboards, and taking money from the Happy Birthday bank in the kindergarten room. The Herdmans don’t know how things are supposed to be since they have never been to church.

Imogene’s portrayal of Mary is loud and bossy. She yells at Joseph to get away from the baby and refuses to let the Wise Men get close.

The Herdmans wonder about what would have happened if the Wise Men hadn’t taken a different route home and had gone back to tell Herod where Jesus was. Ralph says Herod would have murdered Jesus. Imogene says he wouldn’t have. Alice doesn’t think it’s very nice to talk about the baby Jesus being murdered. She is ready to step right in and take over the part of Mary if she has to. In the past, a real baby has played the part of baby Jesus, but with Imogene Herdman playing his mother, no one offers a baby. A foster child, who is finally volunteered, gets adopted. Imogene offers to steal a baby for the play. Mother says they will use a baby doll. Imogene is pleased because a doll can’t bite.

Chapter 6
The last rehearsal takes place at the same time the ladies of the church are also preparing for the pot-luck supper to take place the next day. Mother assures the ladies they will not bother the rehearsal.

Mother does not reach her goal of pushing the rehearsal straight through without stopping. The baby angels come in at the wrong place, the shepherds are afraid to come in because of Gladys, and Imogene cannot find the baby Jesus doll.

Imogene is wearing big gold earrings to keep her pierced ears—compliments of Gladys—from growing shut. She also warns the Wise Men not to touch the baby Jesus, and she argues with Mother that she at least should tell the audience what she had named the baby. She is upset to learn that it was an angel, and not Mary, who named the baby. Mother gives everyone a five-minute recess. The rehearsal will then start all over again. Imogene spends her five minutes in the ladies’ room smoking cigars. The resumed play practice is interrupted when Mrs. Homer McCarthy calls the fire department because she has smelled something funny and has seen some smoke in the ladies’ room. The firemen arrive and make everyone go outside. Reverend Hopkins runs over from the parsonage in his pajamas and woolly bathrobe. The Herdmans figure that they are the cause of whatever is going on, so they leave. While everyone is outside, all the pot-luck committee’s applesauce cakes burn up. The ladies, the baby angels’ mothers, and Reverend Hopkins’ wife were all mad. Mrs. Wendleken reads Alice’s notes and telephones everybody she could think of and Reverend Hopkins.

Reverend Hopkins comes to see Mother to ask if they should call off the pageant. Mother refuses, declaring that it is going to be the best Christmas pageant the church had ever had. Reverend Hopkins is afraid no one will come, but everybody comes to see what the Herdmans will do.

Chapter 7
The night of the pageant, there had been no rehearsal all the way through and Mother does not know what is going to happen. At first nothing different occurs. At 7:30 the pageant begins with the singing of “Away in a Manger” as the ushers light candles.

The choir switches to “Oh, Little Town of Bethlehem,” sings two verses, and then begins humming as they wait for Mary and Joseph to come in from the side door. They hummed and hummed, and hummed. ..

Ralph and Imogene finally come through the door, this time not pushing each other out of the way. They stand for a moment looking confused like refugees in a strange place. Imogene has the baby doll slung up over her shoulder. She thumps it twice on the back before she puts it in the manger.

Next the choir sings “While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by Night” as the shepherds arrive making a lot of noise with the crooks. Gladys pushes her way from behind the angel choir and delivers the only line in the play: “Hey! Unto you a child is born!”

Three carols about angels are required to usher in all the primary kids. The boys sing “We Three Kings of Orient Are” as the Wise Men march up the aisle carrying the ham from the Herdmans’ Christmas food basket. Leroy drops the ham in front of the manger. During “What Child Is This?” the Wise Men are suppose to talk to each other and then leave by a different door, but the Herdmans just sit there. The whole congregation sings “Silent Night,” the last carol, with the choir. It is the end of the pageant, and everyone has been waiting for the Herdmans to do something unexpected, and that’s exactly what happens. Imogene Herdman sits in her crooked veil crying and crying and crying. Nobody seems to know why, but everyone says there was something special about the pageant this year.

Imogene seems to have caught onto the idea of God and the wonder of Christmas all at once. She walks around in a daze and hits the corner of the choir-robe cabinet, giving herself a black eye.

Afterwards there are candy canes and tiny Testaments for everyone and a poinsettia for Mother. Just before they left, Father tells other it was quite a pageant.

Mother has the Herdmans’ ham. They wouldn’t take it, or any candy, or any of the little Bibles. Imogene asks for a set of Bible-story pictures and comments that the picture of Mary is exactly right. To the girl telling the story, Mary is always going to look a lot like Imogene Herdman, and the Wise Men will be Leroy and his brothers, bearing a gift of ham. Outside the church with snow underfoot and stars overhead, she thinks of Gladys as the Angel of the Lord yelling “Hey! Unto you a child is born!”

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