Christmas Pageant
The celebration of holidays and the traditions that go with them are very important to children. Traditions can help provide continuity and stability, as well as fun and enjoyable time that children look forward to all year. At Soaring Oaks, the Children’s Ministries is developing a number of traditions that our children can work toward, look forward to, participate in, and remember fondly as they grow up. Corporately held traditions help promote a sense of community and belonging. The Christmas and Easter pageants are some of the annual events that our children and adults look forward to. Both of these events is one of the few opportunities for the children to serve the church.
As with Advent Club we recognize the importance to counteract the increasing secularization of these two holidays. We believe the pageant helps in this by giving the children something that is spiritually valuable to focus on.
Our Christmas pageant is preformed each December as close to Christmas as possible. We have some overarching goals for the Christmas pageant. They are: (1) The Christmas pageant will tell the story of the Lord Jesus Christ’s birth, his purpose in coming to earth, and help prepare both children and adults for Easter. (2) The content of the Christmas pageant will be excerpts from Scripture. It is our belief that if children (and their parents) are going to take the time and energy to memorize something, what could be more valuable and beneficial than to memorize Scripture. (3) The pageant will introduce children to traditional Christmas hymns. (4) The pageant gives the children an opportunity to serve the church. And (5) The pageant will promote a sense of community for our congregation, and good memories for our children.
Our philosophy in this program is to glorify God not to showcase the children’s talents. This is why we do not have “try-outs” for parts; parts are assigned by the director based on the interest and maturity level of the child. All children from three years through sixth grade are welcome to participate. The pageant tells the Christmas story with scripture memory verses taken from the Old and New Testaments. Each Sunday school class has group verses to learn that are recited in unison during the pageant. Individual speaking parts are assigned to the 4-6 graders first, if we have more parts to fill we will then assign the rest to the 1-3 grade class.
We believe that traditional hymns are a rich part of our Christian heritage and should be passed on to our children. We use the pageant as an opportunity to introduce traditional Christmas hymns to our children to memorize. The hymns are chosen for their appropriateness to the story.
We provide costumes for the children, and we are adding props and sets each year. This has become a much enjoyed community event that is anticipated throughout the year by our congregation.