We moved house three times while I was a small boy and I remember that I was excited at the actual moving, but uninterested in the new location. It was in Dublin at Christmas that I was taken for the first time to the theatre. It was love at first sight and I laughed a great deal. It has been a life long fascination. I think I will never lose the fascination of being caught up in the marvellous world on view up on the stage, knowing that it is happening now as I watch, and fearful that if I look away it may all suddenly disappear into thin air.
But something happened at the theatre one Christmas that really surprised me. I think it was a modernised version of The Pirates of Penzance. And the stage was filled with colour, action and music. Gradually I became aware that there was someone who was not at all engrossed in the musical. It was a little girl, maybe ten years old, and she was sitting with her family right in front of me. At first she simply studied the programme carefully, and then she examined the theatre: the rising levels from stalls, to grand circle, to upper circle. It was a drab building, well past its prime and far from interesting. Next she examined without any obvious curiosity the audience in my row. At intervals her parents attempted with cheerful encouragement to entice her to look at the stage. After a momentary pause, she continued in a bored way to search for diversion anywhere but on the stage.
Everyone else in that theatre was fascinated by the wonder of that production. They could not take their eyes off it for a single moment for fear of missing something. Yet this little girl would not even look at it, and seemed to prefer the boredom of a drab old building and dull ordinary people.
Sometimes at Christmas I remember that little girl when I meet people who complain about people like me who bring Christ into Christmas. Even when they tell me about the presents they received and the parties they attended, I don’t feel any real excitement. Ritually afterwards they tell me how glad they are when it is over, and that it is all too much fuss about nothing. The little girl saw nothing to be excited about in the theatre, and many people find nothing to be excited about in Christmas. But the only show in town, then and now, is the birth of the child, Jesus, and the excitement in the heavens, and in those who know in all its newness that God is with us.
John Looby, Editor