The Christmas Pageant Advent-ure!
When does your church have its Sunday School Christmas Program? At every church I’ve ever been at, they’ve answered this question differently. At my current church, we’ve done it a bit differently each year. One year, we got a little bit creative.Â
I moved to Spokane to accept the call to Beautiful Savior during August. I think it was during my Board of Christian Education meeting that same month that people started talking to me about the Sunday School Christmas program. In the past, the program had always been held on the first Sunday after Christmas. However, on that particular year, the first Sunday after Christmas fell on New year’s Eve, and we were afraid many of our Sunday School families would still be away visiting family. So we decided to move the program to the Sunday before Christmas, and a new idea was born.Â
A Sunday School Advent Program.
With all that happens during the month of December, it can be easy to get overwhelmed by Christmas before December 25th ever arrives. We didn’t want our Sunday School Christmas program to add to that feeling, so we decided to give it an Advent theme. The premise: The directors are ready to cast a traditional Christmas pageant, but to their dismay they find that only characters from the Old Testament have shown up to audition. Instead of calling the whole thing off, they find that each OT friend is able to show them that Christmas is a long-expected event, and that a little bit of waiting and hoping for it can make it all the more special.
We present our program during a Sunday morning worship service, so the script is in three parts.
- The first was presented right after the entrance hymn
- The second was presented right before the sermon
- The third was a short add-on after the benediction
The kids also sang selected stanzas of several hymns throughout the service, including “Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus” and “Go, Tell It on the Mountain.”
We had a lot of fun presenting this program. If your church is looking for a Christmas program to use before Christmas Day, look it over and consider taking your congregation on a Pageant Advent-ure.