Can the Nativity story be written as a comedy?

[Tdnerad]

I have a question about Christmas plays. My family and I converted to Catholicism from Protestantism about three years ago, and my 15-year-old sister has written a play about the Nativity that she wants to perform for Christmas. I realize that doing a play about the Nativity would be fine, but she has written this play as a comedy. She has funny lines that the wise men say when they go before Herod. I’m sure she has not made fun of our Lady or Jesus, but some of the shepherds might say something funny as they are traveling to visit the Christ child. My question is: Is this sacrilegious? Is it wrong to present the Nativity in any way other than what the Bible says?

 

[Michelle_Arnold]

The history of literature and theater are stuffed full of examples of the Christmas story (and other episodes in the Bible) being rewritten in other forms, sometimes directly and sometimes indirectly.

As but one example of the Christmas story being retold in hilarious fashion, take a look at The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson. As another example of the celebrations surrounding Christmas being used to inspire comedy, see Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare, which doesn’t mention Christmas directly but was inspired by the topsy-turvy celebrations surrounding Christmas in Shakespeare’s time and named for the Christmas holiday on which it was first intended to be performed.

Unless your sister’s play contains mockery of the Incarnation or the Holy Family, which would indeed be sacrilegious, her play sounds fine to me. There is nothing wrong with presenting the Wise Men as making a fool of Herod or the shepherds as men so overwhelmed by what they’re witnessing that they either say funny things unintentionally or crack jokes as a means of making sense of what they’re experiencing.