A story that is the same in any language

Koji, like Issei before him, goes to a Protestant daycare. Like all other churches the world over, the kids perform the Christmas Story every year....to a standing-room-only crowd of parents, grandparents, siblings and friends.

At Yuai, only the older kids are in the performance....the 3-and 4-year-olds are "stars" or "sheep" and each group will have one song to sing.

The 4-and 5-year-olds are the shepherds (singing a song as a group), Roman soldiers, or the owners of the inns.

The 5-and 6-year-olds are the main characters....this year Koji was one of the three Shepherds. All of these kids have speaking parts AND they sing solos...some parts are longer than others, but that doesn't matter.
The show is wonderful!!

I think that what I like most about a Christmas Pageant is this....so many times I'll say something or tell a story and someone in my class will say "Oh we say something kind of like that in Japanese." or "There's a similar story in Japan."

But....this story....the Christmas Story...is exactly the same in any language.

The songs? Same.

At Yuai, there are also a few new ones they have put into the story.

(And by "new ones" I mean "songs included within the last 16 years that are new to me", because that's how long it has been since I've been "home" for the holidays and seen a pageant in English!)

So, I give you now a 'picture slide show in movie form"

(because I couldn't, for the life of me, figure out how the heck to download a slide show from Picasa onto the blog...grrrrr. Anyone willing to give "helpful hints" to the incredibly blond author of this blog suffering from a serious case of memory loss, will gain the love and affection of said author for a really long time..or for as long as she remembers!!)

And just in case you were wondering how Koji did on his song....here's a little extra. I didn't realize that he was going to sing at that exact moment and my camera wasn't ready so I missed the first part. Crap. (I hope it uploaded okay. Let me know if it didn't. Thanks.)

We could almost title this, "The Shepherd with a scratchy leg"......but we won't.

I wish you a day of songs sung by children and warm feelings in your heart that make you smile all day long!