Posted on 11/28/2019 6:02:23 PM PST by fproy2222
I remember part of a Nativity story I heard as a kid. If anyone remembers it please relate the whole story.
What I remember is that during a Sunday School pageant about the Nativity the kid playing the inn keeper didn't follow the script and invited Mary and Joseph to take his room. There was more to the story and if anyone has it I would be grateful.
Trouble at the Inn
In this classic story from 1966, a child puts the true meaning of Christmas into the annual holiday pageant.
by Dina DonohueFrom - Posted on Oct 27, 2014
Guideposts: An artist’s rendering of children portraying Joseph, Mary and the innkeeper
For years now, whenever Christmas pageants are talked about in a certain little town in the Midwest, someone is sure to mention the name of Wallace Purling.
Wally’s performance in one annual production of the Nativity play has slipped into the realm of legend. But the old-timers who were in the audience that night never tire of recalling exactly what happened.
Wally was nine that year and in the second grade, though he should have been in the fourth. Most people in town knew that he had difficulty keeping up. He was big and awkward, slow in movement and mind.
Still, Wally was well liked by the other children in his class, all of whom were smaller than he, though the boys had trouble hiding their irritation when Wally would ask to play ball with them or any game, for that matter, in which winning was important.
They’d find a way to keep him out, but Wally would hang around anyway—not sulking, just hoping. He was a helpful boy, always willing and smiling, and the protector, paradoxically, of the underdog. If the older boys chased the younger ones away, it would be Wally who’d say, “Can’t they stay? They’re no bother.”
Wally fancied the idea of being a shepherd in the Christmas pageant, but the play’s director, Miss Lumbard, assigned him a more important role. After all, she reasoned, the innkeeper did not have too many lines, and Wally’s size would make his refusal of lodging to Joseph more forceful.
And so it happened that the usual large, partisan audience gathered for the town’s yearly extravaganza of crooks and creches, of beards, crowns, halos and a whole stageful of squeaky voices.
No one on stage or off was more caught up in the magic of the night than Wallace Purling. They said later that he stood in the wings and watched the performance with such fascination that Miss Lumbard had to make sure he didn’t wander onstage before his cue.
Then the time came when Joseph appeared, slowly, tenderly guiding Mary to the door of the inn. Joseph knocked hard on the wooden door set into the painted backdrop. Wally the innkeeper was there, waiting.
“What do you want?” Wally said, swinging the door open with a brusque gesture.
“We seek lodging.”
“Seek it elsewhere.” Wally spoke vigorously. “The inn is filled.”
“Sir, we have asked everywhere in vain. We have traveled far and are very weary.”
“There is no room in this inn for you.” Wally looked properly stern.
“Please, good innkeeper, this is my wife, Mary. She is heavy with child and needs a place to rest. Surely you must have some small corner for her. She is so tired.”
Now, for the first time, the innkeeper relaxed his stiff stance and looked down at Mary. With that, there was a long pause, long enough to make the audience a bit tense with embarrassment.
“No! Begone!” the prompter whispered.
“No!” Wally repeated automatically. “Begone!”
Joseph sadly placed his arm around Mary and Mary laid her head upon her husband’s shoulder and the two of them started to move away. The innkeeper did not return inside his inn, however. Wally stood there in the doorway, watching the forlorn couple. His mouth was open, his brow creased with concern, his eyes filling unmistakably with tears.
And suddenly this Christmas pageant became different from all others.
“Don’t go, Joseph,” Wally called out. “Bring Mary back.” And Wallace Purling’s face grew into a bright smile. “You can have my room.”
Some people in town thought that the pageant had been ruined. Yet there were others—many, many others—who considered it the most Christmas of all Christmas pageants they had ever seen.
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Tags: Kindness
American nativity story:
Racist misogynist white men came and killed all the natives and that is the North American nativity story. Then they enslaved natives from Africa and that is the slativity nativity story. Then they made all the natives from South America blow the leaves off their lawns after illegally taking the northern section of South America when Klansman Davy Crocket killed off the Spanish Native South Americans who were always peaceful (and didn't make CO2 poison) with semiautomatic bazooka machine guns used for killing kids in schools. Then their prophet Trump came up from Hell and he is bad and orange like Satan and fire and also he photoshops transgender dogs and Rocky for a living and his wife hates him.
Thank you very much. That is the one I was looking for.
Brings tears even today.
LOL! I was just watching “Bad Santa 2” and liked his take on it:
“I’m all about the birth of Christmas. You know, the wise guys kicked ‘em out of the hotel. The ejaculate conception and then the drummer that didn’t have sh!t to give ‘em. And some perfume and the King Midas or one of them threatened to cut the kid in half, turn him into gold. But see uh, it’s a heavy deal for me. Pretty damn heavy.”
hah I never heard that. Now I know a movie I haven’t seen that I can watch. I think I saw the first one.
I heard a version of this story told by Jennifer Paterson on one of “The Two Fat Ladies” shows. Her story was that a little boy wanted to play Joseph but was given the role of the innkeeper instead. As payback, the little boy innkeeper did not tell Mary and Joseph that there was no room at the inn, but said, “Come in, come in, plenty of room!”
</chuckle>
This sounds like a 1966 version of those fake heartstring-tugging stories that make the rounds via email.
That said, so many traditions are destined to end up as true, because God is in charge of the narrative, and He is not bound by time. He can therefore do weird stuff and freak people out.
Some experts tend to criticize the classic nativity scenery traditions because the word for "inn" is the same as the guestchamber that was the upper room (above ground), so likely the main room in the family home. And that the barn scene is more like something right out of Little House on the Prairie, not first century Palestine. And so forth.
Hence no one is really expecting "barnyard" Jesus whose family/ancestral home is that classic Americana farm scene that appears every Christmas across the fruited plain.
Like what, Jesus drives the old red farm truck that's all over the place on the home decor shelves, representing a good old country Christmas? Does he cut down his own tree as well? Because that's what depicted in the truck bed, often with a couple of Labrador Retrievers running along side.
It would be right up there with finding the Ark of the Covenant in a US government warehouse.
Ask the average Biblically illiterate "man on the street" (or at Wally World) where the Ark of the Covenant is located and he would say in a US government warehouse of course. Everybody knows that.
Heh, then what?
In this "Ye shall know that I am the Lord."
It's like that.
Isaiah 52:15 So shall he sprinkle many nations; the kings shall shut their mouths at him: for that which had not been told them shall they see; and that which they had not heard shall they consider.
You sound just the critic I need. If you have twenty minutes to spare, please check out this video of the nativity and see if it is accurate. It was made by folks taught at BYU’s film school,
I think it is good, but I am bious.
Can I give it to my protestant friends without offending them.
The Christ Child: A Nativity Story
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXWoKi5x3lw&t=20s
It happened a couple thousand years ago so how would I know? :)
The God of the living keeps things in real-time perspective, however. The place of the living is the present, and what everyone knows is...
...what happens every year thousands of times over, when all the relatives descend upon the family home for Christmas. The movie Christmas Vacation sums it up, which is why it's a classic. Everybody arguing about the accomodations, or grousing about what obnoxious relative they need suffer, or the senile aunt who puts cat food in the Jello mold...
You figure Mary and Joseph were a kindly unpretentious couple, not given to base emotions and whining. Pretty much no room for their type in the main room, but plenty of peace and quiet out there with the donkey and chickens. :)
You might find this video more to your liking. It addes in a lot of the hardships you focouse on..
But thank you for replying
Not unlike the Kids' Table - another oasis of relative peace during family holiday warfare. Some things stay the same with only the details changing.
Not unlike the Kids' Table - another oasis of relative peace during family holiday warfare. Some things stay the same with only the details changing.
That's an excellent parallel! Which is why I combined my replies.
I watched the video before my reply to fproy about not knowing how accurate because I wasn't there.
I wasn't trying to be flippant. It was beautifully produced, the actors beautiful too, but still is only expert conjecture. I compared the real-world modern example because in the *living* world, that's what we know and see every year, exaggerated through the Christmas Vacation movie but perhaps in some households the Christmases are even worse. :)
It was my long way of saying that people would be shocked at how much of expert opinion is *not* required, and in fact keeps people from noticing the obvious in every day activity and human nature.
The fact is that manger scenes are set up in Christian homes. Even the churches have to worry about thieves snatching Baby Jesus from their outdoor displays.
Luke 2:12 And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.
Thsnk you
“thieves snatching Baby Jesus from their outdoor displays.”
That reminded me of the old Dragnet show where Friday and his partner spent part of the show trying to figure out who stole the baby Jesus from the nativity.
Turned out to be a kid with a new wagon thanking Jesus by giving the baby Jesus a ride in the wagon.
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