School Christmas Show

Big Boy performed in a Christmas concert last week.  The whole family attended and I was proud of how our 2 younger boys sat through the concert.

I was not, however, that impressed with the concert. It began with a play that was about international or race relations described in a thinly veiled rainbow metaphor.  The school described it as a play about "friendship."

The play was dreadful, but not due to the children.  The kids were great - they delivered their lines well and the acting was advanced for their age group.  The songs were well rehearsed and delivered with gusto. Unfortunately, the enthusiasm, skill, and preparedness of the children could not make up for the dull songs or forced storyline of the production. Big Boy was part of the chorus for the colour purple and their song was by far the worst.

After the play we were treated to approximately 10 minutes of Christmas songs, kicked off by the grade 1 class singing "All I Want For Christmas is my Two Front Teeth."  It was really cute because most of them had some teeth missing.

The Christmas songs were fun (Big Boy’s class used kazoos) and both the audience and kids enjoyed them.  The problem was that they were so late in the show that the audience was restless (Little Boy was drinking his milk and dropped the sippy cup on the elementary principal).  It's a shame that they weren’t at the start of the show or perhaps that the play wasn't skipped altogether. 

At first I thought that the rainbow play was performed for reasons of religious and cultural sensitivity.  But any ground that was gained by avoiding a Christmas/Christian play was lost when Christmas songs were performed (and with such gusto) at the end of the show.

I was really proud of Big Boy.  His class (kindergarten) was on stage for the whole performance and they had to wait until late in the show until it was their turn.  Many of Big Boy’s classmates were growing restless and fooling around, but despite this, Big Boy sat properly and sang nicely.  He seemed to enjoy taking part in the show, although there were moments when the look on his face was sheer boredom!

Big Boy did a great job and I’m proud of his performance and effort.