Christmas Pageant

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Sheila82

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Sorry if I am posting this in the wrong place.

This year I volunteered to run the pageant this year. It is short done during Midnight Mass with children. My thoughts where to basically have the only three speaking parts be the Narrator Mary and Gabriel; but I wanted some opinion on songs

So in the right after Jesus is born: Away in the Manger or Silent Night?

After Gabriel tells the shepherds: The First Noel or Hark the Herald Angels Sing

At the end: Joy to the World or Come All Ye Faithful

Thanks, any thoughts on songs or other suggestions are welcomed, our Parrish is very small and are mostly an elderly congregation.
 
If it were me I would go with Away in the Manger, The First Noel and Joy to the World.

My reasons, purely sentimental for the first 2, they were favorites of mine when I was young, and I think both songs sound beautiful when sung by young voices! :love:

Joy to the World, is, in my humble opinion, probably the best Christmas carol ever!! 😃

So there you have it, my "unbiased’ opinion! 😉

Bless you for having the courage to put on the Christmas pagent.
Not an undertaking I would do willingly! 😉
 
Sheila82 said:
This year I volunteered to run the pageant this year. It is short done during Midnight Mass with children. My thoughts where to basically have the only three speaking parts be the Narrator Mary and Gabriel; but I wanted some opinion on songs.
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During which part of the Mass does this take place?
 
Umm. It would be a vehement liturgical abuse and mockery to be done during the mass. It could perhaps be done before or after mass, but it is a liturgical abuse, severe enough I think to be reported immediately to the diocesan bishop or the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments in the Vatican, if it happened during mass. I think I would be horrified to see this during mass, I kid you not.
 
YoungTradCath said:
Umm. It would be a vehement liturgical abuse and mockery to be done during the mass. It could perhaps be done before or after mass, but it is a liturgical abuse, severe enough I think to be reported immediately to the diocesan bishop or the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments in the Vatican, if it happened during mass. I think I would be horrified to see this during mass, I kid you not.
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I agree. According to the Lectionary for Masses with Children and I believe the Directory for Masses with Children the readings should NEVER be acted out or done so that it appears to be a performance. In this case, even though to do it after the homily, to do a pageant during Mass would be an abuse. Sure it may be cute, but that is the problem with it. It takes away from the celebration of the Paschal Mystery and it puts the focus on the children. I wonder how many parent will be there taking pictures. I would not even do it before Mass but on a separate evening maybe during the week or a Sunday night.
 
Oneofthewomen said:
Joy to the World, is, in my humble opinion, probably the best Christmas carol ever!!
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I don’t know where I heard it (it may have been in this forum or on one of Fr. Rutler’s series on EWTN). However, Joy to the World didn’t start off as a Christmas carol. It started off as a regular Sunday hymn and then moved to just being a Christmas carol.
 
Oneofthewomen said:
If it were me I would go with Away in the Manger, The First Noel and Joy to the World.

My reasons, purely sentimental for the first 2, they were favorites of mine when I was young, and I think both songs sound beautiful when sung by young voices! :love:
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Unfortunately, I’m going to have to give some contrary advice 😉

I, too, would favor ‘Away in a Manger’ over ‘Silent Night.’ I think silent night is a bit more difficult to sing, and children’s voices hitting those high notes is kind of… grating.

I would go with ‘Hark! The Herald Angels Sing’ over ‘The First Noel.’ Both are great, and ‘The First Noel’ is one of my favorite Christmas songs. However, I think that if the song is for right after Christ’s birth, the lyrics of ‘Hark!’ are a bit more fitting. They have the feel of a very important proclamation rather than a description of what happened that night as in ‘First Noel’. Not to Further complicate things, but if you have tons of young girls wearing angel wings (as my old parish had for its Christmas pageant) then “Angels We Have Heard on High” is a good choice. It’s lyrics have the advantage of paralleling word of the mass (Gloria in excelsis Deo!), though it is quite hard to sing.

Lastly, I would strongly prefer ‘O Come All Ye Faithful’ to ‘Joy to the World.’ The latter isn’t truly a Christmas song, and I think ‘O Come’ sounds a bit more like an invitation to worship, which is a nice way to prepare for Christ’s coming in the Eucharist (“O come let us adore him”). Plus, you can teach the kids to do at least one verse in the traditional Latin! 👍
Oneofthewomen said:
Joy to the World, is, in my humble opinion, probably the best Christmas carol ever!! 😃

So there you have it, my "unbiased’ opinion! 😉
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Finally, I must humbly *insist * that “O Come All Ye Faithful” is the best Christmas song of all time. :cool: I prefer to call it “Adeste Fidelis,” and humbly submit this rousing rendition by Pavarotti as proof!

I could perhaps give “O Holy Night” the runner-up position, though.
 
I would check with the music director to see what they already planned for mass so you don’t repeat.

Why is a children’s deal done at midnight mass?
 
Sheila82 said:
Thanks, any thoughts on songs or other suggestions are welcomed
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I suggest you do not have the Christmas pageant at Mass. Homily time is for a homily- not a play. There’s plenty of time during the Christmas season for this. Considering that many people who go to Midnight Mass only go to Mass once or twice a year, the congregation will have far more pressing needs than to hear a children’s play (which, in all honesty, are often times much more cute than inspiring). I know these are harsh words, but the Mass is the most sublime treasure conceivable- it makes everything else that has ever existed or will ever exist seem as less than nothing. It is not the place to be “cute.”
 
PrayForMeStJude said:
Finally, I must humbly *insist * that “O Come All Ye Faithful” is the best Christmas song of all time. :cool: I prefer to call it “Adeste Fidelis,” and humbly submit this rousing rendition by Pavarotti as proof!

I could perhaps give “O Holy Night” the runner-up position, though.
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OK, I will have to conceed to you on this one! 😉

Let just say it is definately in the Top 5!! 👍
 
We are a very small church in an elderly community. We are actually considered a mission; and besides my three children there is only another family that has five children and we both like to attend the Midnight Mass so that is why it is done at that Mass. Occasionally we do get grandchildren of other members visiting for Christmas and they participate as well but it is never a huge amount

I am sorry that I may offended some of you as to the time I am doing this. I did not pick the time it was told to me by the pastoral council and this the fourth year it has been done, and everyone else always had it at this time. It was not of choosing nor do I see how it is making a mockery of the Mass, or how it could be considered disrespectful.

Thank you to everyone who has responded and I could personally like to say the I believe Silent Night followed closely by O Little Town of Bethlehem are the best ever written
 
Sheila82 said:
We are a very small church in an elderly community. We are actually considered a mission; and besides my three children there is only another family that has five children and we both like to attend the Midnight Mass so that is why it is done at that Mass. Occasionally we do get grandchildren of other members visiting for Christmas and they participate as well but it is never a huge amount

I am sorry that I may offended some of you as to the time I am doing this. I did not pick the time it was told to me by the pastoral council and this the fourth year it has been done, and everyone else always had it at this time. It was not of choosing nor do I see how it is making a mockery of the Mass, or how it could be considered disrespectful.

Thank you to everyone who has responded and I could personally like to say the I believe Silent Night followed closely by O Little Town of Bethlehem are the best ever written
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You didn’t offend anyone. It is just that doing a play in the middle of Mass is really an abuse. The documents specify that anything resembling a play is to be avoided. It is nothing against you because you are only doing what the parish council said, but I wonder how many on that council have actually had any real liturgical experience or have read liturgical documents. The problem is that people think it is a good idea, it’s cute, the people will like it…but they don’t realize that it is not allowed in the liturgy. Pastors go along with it because they don’t want to make waves.

I suggest you read up on it and next year suggest to the council that they do it on a SUnday afternoon or evening. Inform them about the liturgical rules regarding plays at Mass. Maybe even more people will be able to come since it is not at midnight and people who don’t want to sit though a play at Mass might come to Midnight Mass.
 
Joannm said:
It is just that doing a play in the middle of Mass is really an abuse. The documents specify that anything resembling a play is to be avoided. It is nothing against you because you are only doing what the parish council said, but I wonder how many on that council have actually had any real liturgical experience or have read liturgical documents. The problem is that people think it is a good idea, it’s cute, the people will like it…but they don’t realize that it is not allowed in the liturgy. Pastors go along with it because they don’t want to make waves.

I suggest you read up on it and next year suggest to the council that they do it on a SUnday afternoon or evening. Inform them about the liturgical rules regarding plays at Mass. Maybe even more people will be able to come since it is not at midnight and people who don’t want to sit though a play at Mass might come to Midnight Mass.
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I will do that next year, Thank you and it might even work out as I am thinking of joining the council. As I said it is just me and one other family in my parish and I would like to get involved to help bring other younger people in; it would just be nice.
 
Sheila82 said:
I will do that next year, Thank you and it might even work out as I am thinking of joining the council. As I said it is just me and one other family in my parish and I would like to get involved to help bring other younger people in; it would just be nice.
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I think the best thing to do moving forward is to suggest to the priest that you’d like to do the pageant before mass. I used to attend a HUGE parish with easily 100 kids involved in the pageant. They did it right before the mass. The lady in charge would welcome everyone, the kids would do the pageant, everyone would ooh and aah, and then Father would say mass when everything had settled down and the kids were out of costume and back in their seats.

There’s no reason you couldn’t do it this way THIS year, as it doesn’t really involve any extra planning. And really its for a practical purpose. If the pageant is in the middle of mass, you will be scrambling to get the kids ready and in place, something could go wrong as so many things with kids do, and then you have to get everything back to normal for the rest of mass. It would likely be less distracting for you, the parishoners, and the kids to just do the pageant first so everyone can be fully focused on mass afterwards. And since you’ve stepped up to arrange this, they can at least repay you by letting you focus on mass during mass!

In any case, good luck and I wish you great success!
 
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