Read The Best Christmas Pageant Ever for Free Online Page B

Herdmans, though. She just asked them why they wanted library cards.
    â€œWe want to read about Jesus,” Imogene said.
    â€œNot Jesus,” Ralph said, “that king who was out to get Jesus . . . Herod.”
    Later on Miss Graebner told my mother that she had been a librarian for thirty-eight years and loved every minute of it because every day brought something new and different. “But now,” she said, “I might as well retire. When Imogene Herdman came in and said she wanted to read about Jesus, I knew I’d heard everything there was to hear.”
    At the next rehearsal Mother started, again, to separate everyone into angels and shepherds and guests at the inn but she didn’t get very far. The Herdmans wanted to rewrite the whole pageant and hang Herod for a finish. They couldn’t stand it that he died in bed of old age.
    â€œIt wasn’t just Jesus he was after,” Ralph told us. “He killed all kinds of people.”
    â€œHe even killed his own wife,” Leroy said.
    â€œAnd nothing happened to him,” Imogene grumbled.
    â€œWell, he died, didn’t he?” somebody said. “Maybe he died a horrible death. What did he die of?”
    Ralph shrugged. “It didn’t say. Flu, I guess.”
    They were so mad about it that I thought they might quit the pageant. But they didn’t—not then or ever—and all the people who kept hoping that the Herdmans would get bored and leave were out of luck. They showed up at rehearsals, right on time, and did just what they were supposed to do.
    But they were still Herdmans, and there was at least one person who didn’t forget that for a minute.
    One day I saw Alice Wendleken writing something down on a little pad of paper, and trying to hide it with her other hand.
    â€œIt’s none of your business,” she said.
    It wasn’t any of my business, but it wasn’t any of Alice’s, either. What she wrote was “Gladys Herdman drinks communion wine.”
    â€œIt isn’t wine,” I said. “It’s grape juice.”
    â€œI don’t care what it is, she drinks it. I’ve seen her three times with her mouth all purple. They steal crayons from the Sunday-school cupboards, too, and if you shake the Happy Birthday bank in the kindergarten room it doesn’t make a sound. They stole all the pennies out of that.”
    I was amazed at Alice. I would never think to go and shake the Happy Birthday bank.
    â€œAnd every time you go in the girls’ room,” she went on, “the whole air is blue, and Imogene Herdman is sitting there in the Mary costume, smoking cigars!”
    Alice wrote all these things down, and how many times each thing happened. I don’t know why, unless it made her feel good to see, in black and white, just how awful they were.
    Since none of the Herdmans had ever gone to church or Sunday school or read the Bible or anything, they didn’t know how things were supposed to be. Imogene, for instance, didn’t know that Mary was supposed to be acted out in one certain way—sort of quiet and dreamy and out of this world.
    The way Imogene did it, Mary was a lot like Mrs. Santoro at the Pizza Parlor. Mrs. Santoro is a big fat lady with a little skinny husband and nine children and she yells and hollers and hugs her kids and slaps them around. That’s how Imogene’s Mary was—loud and bossy.
    â€œGet away from the baby!” she yelled at Ralph, who was Joseph. And she made the Wise Men keep their distance.
    â€œThe Wise Men want to honor the Christ Child,” Mother explained, for the tenth time. “They don’t mean to harm him, for heaven’s sake!”
    But the Wise Men didn’t know how things were supposed to be either, and nobody blamed Imogene for shoving them out of the way. You got the feeling that these Wise Men were going to hustle back to Herod as fast as they could and squeal on the baby, out of