From Christmas plays to questions of leadership

If you’re reading this in December, it’s likely that whatever I’m doing right now, I’m thinking about one thing, and one thing only: the Sunday School Christmas play.

In fact, as I write this it’s still October and already I’m a woman consumed. It’s not just the performing and the rehearsing and the hyping (to the children). Part of what makes the obsession so protracted is that I have somehow ended up backing myself into the position of writing the scripts from scratch each year.

Each year’s effort now follows a tried and tested pattern: it’s basically a poem, narrated by some children and acted by others, with a Jesus twist at the end. If that sounds unbearably twee to you, then you may well be right – but it’s surprising what degree of sentimentality you can get away with in the second half of December.