Christmas Play Past

Christmas plays are always a highlight of the Christmas season for grandparents and parents with young children.  I found this little gem in our vault the other day.  It’s called Christmas Around the World - A Merry Christmas Play in One Act, written by Leeta McCully Cherry.  The cost of the book was $.10 and it was published by the Education Publishing Co. Ltd., Toronto, Ontario.  It’s a thin little booklet, only about 6” tall and 4” wide and has no date printed on it.  I couldn’t find anything specific on this author, but she seems to have published a number of these little booklets as well as some other stories for children.

This play has 12 characters, but the way it’s structured you could easily take some out if you did not have enough children to play the parts.  You could also easily add more if you have them!  As it's written, it takes about 20-25 minutes to stage.

The play starts with The Spirit of Christmas saying:

“All over the world on Christmas night

The Spirit of Christmas is stealing
Filling all hearts with true joy and delight
And setting the merry bells peeling.”

Then the other characters gradually join and say their brief piece about Christmas.  The play is very nice with all of these characters from different countries talking about the happiness of Christmas.  Besides the Spirit of Christmas, the characters include:

• Italian girl
• Russian girl
• Girl from Norway and Sweden
• Serbian girl
• Spanish girl
• Dutch girl
• German girl
• French girl
• Polish girl
• Canadian girl
• Santa Claus

At the end, the chorus all says:

“Who comes and visits us each year?
Santa Claus!  Santa Claus!
Who is to all our lands most dear?
This same good Santa Claus!

Christmas plays for youngsters are a timeless classic.  Let’s hope there are always people willing to put them on!