Away in a manger

My Christmas acting career took an unexpected turn for the worse Sunday night at church.

We were doing a cantata, and it incorporated some of the characters from the live nativity the week before. Well, I had done a star turn as Thomas the shepherd, but then I learned that the shepherds were expected to do a dance number in the cantata, and I don’t dance. I’ve always said that if you ever see me dancing, smoking a cigar or eating jalapeno peppers, it’s time to take me home. I’ve had too much eggnog.

So I traded roles with a guy who was playing Joseph, because he wanted to dance, and all Joseph had to do was walk down the aisle with Mary, and sit there the whole time looking at the baby Jesus. This I could handle.

I wasn’t sure how to play Joseph. Did I go with a brooding, dangerous James Dean portrayal? Or maybe a quiet, strong Clint Eastwood type. Or perhaps I’d play him as a young Brando would, bristling with energy and nervous tension.

In the end, I didn’t give it much thought. I didn’t even go to the dress rehearsal. How hard can it be to walk in, sit down, and do nothing? I do that at work all the time.

The cantata started, and Mary and I began our walk down the aisle to the makeshift manger scene in the front of the church. Mary was a little young for me – maybe 15 or 16 – but since it’s a virgin birth, I didn’t feel that bad about it.

We got down to the front of the church, and Mary reached into the crib there to get the baby Jesus – and he wasn’t there. She fumbled around in the blankets for a while, but she came up empty. She looked at me with pleading eyes, and I whispered to her that she should just pick up the blankets and pretend there was a baby there. Nobody would ever know.

So that’s what she did. We sat down on chairs that were pushed together and covered by a blanket, so that it looked like a bench, and we pretended to look in awe at our imaginary Baby Jesus. It wasn’t a real comfortable seat – it was kind of lumpy – but I figured it would be over soon, and I could handle it.

After a minute or so, I noticed that Mary was looking at someone in the congregation, and then she turned to me in wide-eyed panic. She said something that I didn’t catch, so I leaned in closer and asked her to repeat it, and she said, “You’re sitting on it.”

Well, there you have it. I was sitting on the Baby Jesus. If I ever appear at the gates of heaven on Judgment Day, I may have some things to answer for, but I suspect this one’s going to top them all.

There was nothing to do then, really, but to stand up casually, and let Mary rescue the baby Jesus from under my buttocks, which she did. Thank goodness we didn’t use a real baby, like they do in some pageants.

Mary and I hoped nobody would notice what had happened, and that they would be caught up in the beautiful songs and the little kids dressed as angels and the whole spirit of Christmas, and the whole incident would be forgotten.

Then afterward, one guy comes up to me and says, “Way to pull out one out of your ass.” Another said, “You’re the guy who hatched Jesus.”

I suspect this incident will haunt me for the rest of my days at this church. No matter how much work I do or how many plays I’m in or how much money I give, I’ll always be the guy who sat on Jesus. Somebody pass the eggnog.