Christmas With the Herdmans

All of this got started with a kid’s book. My wife had taken our oldest son to the library a few days ago to check out books. She wanted to get a few Christmas and holiday books. Some of our thought process was that it would be nice to help him understand how different countries and cultures celebrate Christmas. After all, Christmas is much bigger than what my family does and much truer than what America typically does (that is another topic). It was on this trip to the library that she found a book that she read in elementary school. The name of the book is The Worst Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson. 

I had never heard of this book.

She began reading the book chapter by chapter with our son in the afternoons. She wasn’t necessarily overtaken by the nostalgia of a book she knew as a child. She remembered it and much of the storyline. But, she began telling me about the story. The characters. The church. The lost.

Needless to say, I was intrigued. So much so that I took the book last Monday and plowed through its 108 pages in roughly an hour and a half.

If you are not familiar with this book, let me recap for you briefly. It is a first person narrative from the perspective of a young girl who is in late elementary school, so let’s guess 4^th grade. She tells of the Herdmans…6 brothers and sisters from a broken family, who look like future convicts, and who treat everyone they meet with disdain and contempt. Basically, they are bullies…or the O’Doyle family from Billy Madison. In an effort to pretend that the tormenting doesn’t bother him, the narrator’s little brother inadvertently invites this clan to church. Church was the one safe haven the rest of the kids had from the Herdmans.

That’s when it happens. These kids show up to church because they are expecting an endless snack buffet, only to learn about the Christmas pageant that the narrator’s mom is now directing. In hearing about this pageant, the 6 Herdman children also hear about Jesus and the truth behind Christmas for the first time. Their open questions about Herod, the Wise men, the stable, and the shepherds are actually refreshing when placed on the backdrop of the church kids who know the story and the characters, but have missed the sacrificial meaning.

Mary, the mother of Jesus, is supposed to be a spotless young girl. Not afraid of her situation or condition. Not weary from being pregnant. Not ill-prepared to be a teenage mother. Basically, she is supposed to be pristine in every way, though the Bible does not present her that way. The young girl who has normally played Mary would make a very good Baptist, I believe. She takes meticulous notes about everything the Herdman kids do wrong in the church, out of the church, and in the pageant. She does not see the manger as a place where broken people find hope, but a place where only perfect people can approach. Imagine her thoughts when one of the Herdman girls becomes Mary for this year’s production!

In all of this, these kids, the ones on whom society AND the church had turned their backs, find themselves in the midst of the greatest story ever told. They find themselves portraying the “holy family” in the truest story the world has ever known. They are met face to face with God’s gift. The ones being the magi in the pageant bring their best offering as well…a ham their family received from the church’s benevolence team. Their sacrifice was staggering!

As I am reading this book…this kid’s book, mind you…I am overcome with a strange guilt and compassion. Guilt because I know all to well what it is like to be Alice Wendleken, the girl who normally plays Mary. I know the part of being so “churched” that I cannot help but look at what the unchurched are doing wrong. The identity of one who has become so desensitized to the Nativity that it becomes flustering when people of different backgrounds and of no religious background can’t get Jesus right at Christmas. Guilt because I know how wonderful the Birth narrative is, but too often focus my Christmas schedule and priority on my family and not on those who need this baby.

At the same time, I feel a strange compassion. Trust me when I say strange, my wife will tell you that I do not feel compassion all that often…so, a kid’s book bringing this out is a bit strange. It’s a compassion for those who do not know. In Fairburn, in South Fulton, in Coweta, in Fayette, in Atlanta there are families that are drowning in brokenness. They do not have hope. They live for survival alone. Some of them will say Merry Christmas. Some of them will even be able to say that Jesus was born at Christmas. But, most of them do not know why. Most of them do not know how Jesus changes everything. Most of them have not seen the Church bridge the brokenness of their lives with the Gospel. The Church is on the verge of turning their backs on them.

We huddle up, when God has told us to GO. We retreat, when the Gospel is about advance. We focus inward, when Christmas is the most outward expression of love and concern for another in the history of the world. The truth is that this Sunday we have two opportunities for the Herdmans to come and hear about Jesus. They may show up and mess things up. That is okay. The Herdmans might come in and speak out of turn, act unbecomingly (because we all know that none of us have ever misbehaved in a church!), or cause us to have to sit somewhere else. The Herdmans may show up and ask questions that seem out of line OR (even worse!) should be common sense to anyone who has been in church before! And that is perfectly fine with me. You often miss the answers when the questions are not asked.

What is even better about you and me taking time to spend Christmas with the Herdmans is that our bridge to their brokenness will bring us to a fuller understanding of the Christmas narrative. Let me encourage you to find a Herdman near you. You won’t have to look far. God may have already been placing someone on your heart for some time now. Take Christmas to them. Take the True story of this holiday to their brokenness. Turn the Church towards their heart. Bring them, their brokenness, and your brokenness to the threshold of the stable, where the King of Kings heals, reconciles, and adopts.

That is where Imogene Herdman ends in this book. She’s loud, she’s dirty, and she’s mean. But, after she plays the role of Mary, all she can do is hold the baby Jesus and cry. “Actually, nobody hit Imogene and she didn’t hit anyone else. Her eye wasn’t really black either, just all puffy and swollen. She had walked into the corner of the choir robe cabinet, in kind of a daze—as if she had just caught onto the idea of God, and the wonder of Christmas” (p. 105). May we be a people who bring others into the wonder of Christmas, the true idea of God, and the change that Jesus brings.

Merry Christmas to you! May you make it merry for someone else, too!