Do you remember what a joke school was in December? Lessons spent playing bingo, making party hats and own clothes day. It was brilliant, and of course it was all building up to the biggest doss of them all, the school nativity play.
You could always guarantee that something would go wrong during the play. So we here at UNILAD present the things that would always happen during your school nativity.
We’re not claiming that all of these happened at once, although that’d be pretty funny to see.
Kid Who Forgot Their Costume
No matter how much effort the teachers put into making sure that everyone had brought their costume in the day of the play you could always guarantee that one kid would forget his outfit. This would lead to the odd moment when the three wise men following a star would have one member wearing, what looks an awful lot like a school uniform, and not traditional Middle Eastern garb.
Kid With The Best Costume
The exact opposite of the forgetting your costume was having a parent who saw the annual nativity as a contest to show up the other parents. Which is why you’d get two angels both with a pair of pound shop angel wings and a third whose real goose feather wings looked so real you’d swar that the kid wearing them could fly if they wanted to.
Kid Forgets Their Lines
To be honest when you think about it, it’s a bit unfair to get kids to learn all those lines, so it’s no surprise that sometimes kids can forget a few lines. This always led to an awkward pause and the sound of a teacher waiting in the wings frantically hissing the line from off stage usually spurring the kids memory, but occasionally leading to the having a bit of a wobble.
Waving At Parents
Being on stage can be a bit unnerving, so is no wonder that kids can be a bit dazed and forget where they are. This usually leads to a strange moment where the innkeeper will take a break from telling Mary that there’s no room in the inn to wave out into the crowd hoping to grab the attention of their mum, dad, grandparents or family member who was forced to come and sit through a shitty kids’ play.
Chorus Mouthing Song
Everyone knows that being chosen to be part of the chorus in the nativity isn’t great in fact it’s worse than that, if were honest its mega shit. It basically means that the teacher didn’t have faith in you to learn your lines and be good on stage so instead they put you close to them so they could keep an eye on you. So again it’s no surprise that the kids in the chorus never quite know the words to little donkey and end up just mouthing as the music teacher bellows the song in an attempt to hide the murmuring.
Awkward Nose Picking
Despite teachers pleading with children to keep their hands by their sides while on stage, there was always that one kid who just couldn’t stop himself mining for nose gold while he was stood on stage. I’d almost admire the boldness if I wasn’t so disgusted by what I just saw him eat.
Kid Wets Themselves
Ok this one’s probably traumatic for the people it happens to, but it seems that every time the teachers try and make sure that the kids have all been to the bathroom one slips through the net and has an accident on stage. This can seem awkwardly sacrilegious if it’s the Virgin Mary but if it’s one of the sheep or the donkey then the kids should probably be lauded for their method acting.
Kid Falls Off Stage
The perils of putting children on stage are many, and there’s always one kid who managed to all of the stage, which is impressive considering a child’s so small that they have quite a decent centre of gravity. The kid would usually fall, maybe dragging a mate down with him and the clip would end up on You’ve Been Framed, which was like YouTube before we invented the internet.
Teacher Has To Come On Stage To Stop Kids Fighting
We all know that kids can be cruel, especially to each other, and dressing them up in stupid costumes is a sure fire way to get them annoyed. All it takes is the spark of a small nudge or a toe to get trod on and they’ll be a small scrap. Now obviously the teacher can’t have Joseph and the angels brawling, no matter how much it spices up the stale format of the Christmas nativity, so they’ll be forced to come on stage. This usually end’s with them either being taken off stage and a teacher shouting the lines off stage, like the voice of god.
More of a concept than a journalist, Tom Percival was forged in the bowels of Salford University from which he emerged grasping a Masters in journalism.
Since then his rise has been described by himself as ‘meteoric’ rising to the esteemed rank of Social Editor at UNILAD as well as working at the BBC, Manchester Evening News, and ITV.
He credits his success to three core techniques, name repetition, personality mirroring, and never breaking off a handshake.