A Christmas play. Or, doing weird things to baby Jesus.

December 25. The Nativity of Our Lord or Christmas Day. White. Double First Class with privileged Octave. First Mass at Midnight. Station at the Altar of the Crib at St. Mary Major’s. –from the rubrics of my pre-Vatican II Latin Missal

On Christmas Eve we went to church — my birth parish, not my new one, a change that is itself a story to tell sometime. And a Nativity play was part of the Mass.

The way it worked was this. The deacon read the decree-from-Caesar-Augustus-and-no-room-at-the-inn-and-the-shepherds-were-sore-afraid part of Luke. And at relevant points of the Gospel, cued by pauses, children dressed as animals and stars and Mary and Joseph would run up into the sanctuary and strike a pose.

The first pause was ill-timed. The deacon, after reading that these were the days when Quirinius was governor of Syria, waited expectantly. I looked toward the sacristy door, anticipating a boy dressed as Quirinius. Mary and Joseph trotted out instead.

After the Gospel, all the kids having sat down, Father announced that his homily would consist of a second Nativity play and that he would put the kids to work again. Father was a visiting Father. He didn’t know any better.

He needed Mary back, and a donkey and an angel. He also needed an Adam and Eve, which raised eyebrows. Two shepherds, boy and girl, were drafted for the roles. And the kids, awkward in a performance for which they had not studied and about which they had not been informed, fulfilled the requirements of Father’s script like rusty gears.

Adam and Eve, in Father’s telling, were asleep and woke up hungry. So they ate and were filled — with air, as far as the congregation could observe. Then they went back to sleep, lying down on the sanctuary floor.

Then they were hungry again and ate some more air, and then they went back to sleep and did it all a third time. So Adam and Eve wondered, as Father told us, whether they would have to do this whole getting hungry and eating thing for their whole lives. I am sure the actors portraying them wondered, too.

Now time suddenly fractured as the angel, prodded by Father, told Adam and Eve that Mary was waiting for them in Bethlehem with good news. Reminder: this is Adam and Eve. And, in my understanding, neither Judean towns nor Mary have happened yet. But off Adam and Eve ventured, walking a few feet across the sanctuary to Bethlehem.

In Bethlehem the wooden manger and the wooden baby Jesus awaited them, with a mystified-looking Mary alongside, and so too the donkey, gamely pretending to eat grass around the manger as Father had directed him. And now, Father said, Adam and Eve would never be hungry again because they would do like the donkey.

He told Adam and Eve to kneel down by the manger, where they were to eat more air, this time from baby Jesus’ mouth. They obliged for several seconds, trying hard to not butt their heads together.

I turned to my mother. She reciprocated by casting me a deer-in-headlights look. I bent down and compressed myself to avoid exploding in laughter.

Father now launched into the Creed with no further ado.

I got the metaphor: fallen humanity and the Redemption and the Eucharist. But then, I’ve been doing this a long time, much of it as a paraprofessional. These mostly kindergarten-aged kids, on the other hand, will remember the year that the one-off retired priest made them do that weird thing to the baby Jesus and never told them why.

After the Creed, the deacon told us in excited voice that we had a special visitor. And Santa Claus made his annual stride down the central aisle.

This time I turned to my dad. He was tight-lipped, annoyed. My father is a Lutheran elder. He is a keep-Christ-in-Christmas type, though not obnoxiously so. He does not like when Santa comes to church.

Santa Claus stepped into the sanctuary, where the awed kids parted for him. He knelt in front of the manger for a few moments of silent prayer. Then Santa stood up and we all, per the deacon’s invitation, sang Happy Birthday to Jesus.

After the song I turned to my dad again and mouthed: “And many more.” That is how we conclude Happy Birthday at home. Dad remained tight-lipped, his eyes cast down toward the wood of the pew.

“And now we’d better let Santa go, ‘cause I’m sure he has a really busy night,” the deacon said brightly.

“That’s right, but first let’s give Santa a chance to make his adoration,” Father ordered.

Santa Claus had just made his adoration right before the Happy Birthday. The whole congregation had seen it. But Father hadn’t. Or, he thought somewhat like my dad did, and wanted the jolly old elf to pay for his consumerist insouciance. So Santa knelt in front of the manger and prayed some more. This time he made sure to do it longer.

I tried to be sanguine. After all, Santa Claus is technically a bishop. Perhaps this counted as concelebrating Mass.

The rest of the service proceeded without incident. Then our little American family went home to break a Polish oplatek and eat bowls of Italian minestra de fasoi with two bottles of German Gewurztraminer.

For as it is written: “All nations shall serve him.”