Those Childhood Christmas programs

In second grade, I was possibly a dancing doll, or ballerina, or something in our school Christmas play!  I've been looking at old photos and all of the Christmas play pics look just like this one:  A really bright head right in front of the picture taker and some shadowy figures on the stage. 

I know for sure that these girls are Jana, Stacey and myself.  How do I know that?  Because we were the only three girls in our class and for the Christmas plays, your parts were assigned by grade and gender.  If the play called for dancing dolls in red tutus, and the part seemed appropriate for a second grade girl, the part was multiplied by however many second grade girls there happened to be!  One year I was a top.  I wore a red leotard (how fortunate to be able to recycle costumes!) and my mom made a cool frame of two circles with twisted crepe paper attaching them together.  The top one was around my neck and the bottom one hung around my bottom.  The picture we have looks a lot like the one above so you'll just have to use your imagination! 

As I look back on these plays, I'm amazed by the ingeniuity and fortitude of our teachers.  Every child had to have a part--singing, dancing or speaking.  Every child in school.  Even those who couldn't sing, dance or speak well. 

We were assigned our part in music class.  Of course the music teacher was in charge.   Remember those blue ditto sheets?  The ones that were sometimes smudged and usually hard to read?  The page of the play with our part was given to us and we were expected to take it home and take it to class and practice everywhere.  Our classroom teacher practiced with us and our parents practiced with us and probably our bus driver practiced with us too! 

The week before the performance was an excitement-filled time for the students.  I'm sure we had lessons but we were also busy making Christmas presents for our parents, making classroom Christmas decorations and practicing, practicing, practicing!  See what I mean by teacher fortitude? 

At last the day came for the performance and it was always a big success of course. In our little community, everyone came to school to see the Christmas program. I don't really remember the plays, except for the performance.  But I do remember what came after!  Santa Claus and bags of Candy!  It was always fun to try to guess who's dad was playing Santa Claus each year!  And in our gym was a HUGE real Christmas Tree that was probably at least 15 feet tall. 

 
Then we'd go home and gorge ourselves on candy and leave the apple and orange for Mom and Dad to eat.  I always ate the peanut clusters first, then the orange slices, and saved the ribbon candy and peanuts in the shell for last. 

I'm hungry.  I think I'll go make some peanut clusters....