Just been to the last of umpteen Children's Christmas Shows that I've been attending this year, some in my role as a minister, and one as a father, and the good thing is that this year I haven't yet had to sing "Away in a manger" whereas in days gone by I would have sung it 14 times by December 3rd! Things really have moved on - instead of the same nativity story and the bog-standard carols of years gone by, now every year-group competes to find the show with the cleverest twist on the Christmas story, and the most upbeat songs - so we now have grumpy shepherds, silly sheep, singing stars and all manner of interpretations of what the word C.H.R.I.S.T.M.A.S. stands for. Of course, just like the old-style nativities, these new ones are enhanced in ways their authors never anticipated - by elves spending the entire performance with their finger up their nose; or by the Angel Gabriel tucking her wings into her knickers in the inevitable toilet stop immediately before
Dialogues, monologues, sketches, poems, rants, theological and liturgical bits and bobs and miscellaneous other verbal doodles...