Christmas at School

This is a bit late to be included in the Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories (hosted by Thomas MacEntee) for the December 16th installment, but better late than never and I still want to play along, so here goes. . . the topic was "What did you do to celebrate Christmas at school? Were you ever in a Christmas Pageant?"

It's been soooo long since I was in elementary school that I don't remember many specific events at Christmas. I'm sure we did the normal "crafty" things as gifts for our parents. I remember seeing one ornament that us kids made (our class pictures cut into a circle and put into a canning lid with a piece of red yarn attached so it could be hung on the Christmas tree) but I don't know if we did that in school or if it was one of Mom's projects to keep us busy. We probably also had class parties, but nothing rings a bell.

The school I went to through all 12 years was the same one that my Dad attended. We even had some of the same teachers! Anyway, there were only 40 kids in my graduating class and it was one of the larger classes; it was a small-town school. I vaguely remember Santa Claus visiting with members of the American Legion. They handed out an apple, an orange and a small bag of candy to everyone in the school or maybe it was just to the elementary kids.

As far as pageants are concerned, I only attended one and that was during my sister's senior year in high school. The small local schools had consolidated in 1966 (the year I graduated) and the last graduating class from the small schools was in 1968. So 1972 was the first year that a class graduated from Wawasee High School and that happened to be my sister's class. I was away in the Navy and wouldn't be able to make it home for Christmas but was able to get there the middle of December, before the schools let out for the winter break. Terry (my sister) was in the school orchestra and played the double bass. That year the orchestra and choir put on an "Olde English" Renaissance style Christmas pageant and dinner. All the participants were dressed in costume and the servers spoke in the old style. It was an interesting and fun evening and I was glad that I was able to be there. It was one of the few times that I attended any of her school events.