As the children watched, Joy stepped forward and asked in a high clear voice, “What is tomorrow?”
“Christmas!” yelled the children.
“And what is special about Christmas?” Joy asked.
Children began calling out their answers from all over the theater:
“No school!”
“Presents!”
“Santa Claus!”
Finally, one boy shouted, “It’s Jesus’ birthday!”
“That’s right!” Joy exclaimed. “It’s Jesus’ birthday! And on His birthday we give presents to each other. But on that first Christmas, God gave us His son, and that is the most precious gift the world has ever received. Even though that first Christmas happened a long time ago, the world is still celebrating Jesus’ birthday.”
Joy stopped for a moment, and then she began to speak again, “The story of Christmas began two thousand years ago in the little village of Nazareth in Galilee. God sent the angel Gabriel there to tell a young girl named Mary that she was going to have a baby boy who would be called the Son of God and that she was to name the baby ‘Jesus’.
“Mary asked the angel how she could have a baby since she was not married, but the angel told her not to worry, because she would be visited by the Holy Spirit, and God himself would be the baby’s father.”
As Joy finished speaking, Andy lifted his arm and pointed his little finger at the top of the Christmas tree. Then a miracle happened. Suddenly all of the children heard a voice—not in Pig, but in their own languages. The children from France heard the voice speaking French, the children from Germany heard the voice speaking German, the children from China heard the voice speaking Chinese. Each child, no matter where he was from, heard the voice speaking in the language of his own country. The voice sounded like the voice of an angel, and the voice told the children all the things that Joy had just been speaking about.
When the voice stopped speaking, an ornament bigger than a pumpkin appeared on the tree. It was golden and glowing, and inside the ornament the children could see the angel Gabriel talking to Mary.
When all was quiet, Joy continued speaking. “Everything happened just as the angel had said. Mary was going to have a baby boy, and she married a carpenter named Joseph, who was a man of God. Joseph knew that Mary had been visited by the Holy Spirit and that her baby was the Son of God, so he was very careful to obey God in everything concerning the baby boy.
“About that time the Roman Emperor ordered that all the people go to the city where their ancestors had lived so that they could be counted. Joseph had to go to Bethlehem in Judea to be counted, and he took Mary with him.”
When Joy spoke the last word, the entire stage began to glow, and another enormous ornament appeared on the tree. The children could see Mary riding on a little donkey and Joseph walking along beside her inside the ornament. And they heard a song about the little town of Bethlehem being sung by a heavenly voice that sounded more like a flute than a Human voice, but it must have been a voice because they clearly heard all the words.
The children felt so happy that they did not even want to move, and when Joy continued the story, they listened carefully to every word she said. “When Mary and Joseph arrived in Bethlehem, it was time for her baby to be born, but there was no room for them at the inn. The innkeeper allowed them to go into the place where the animals were kept, and when the baby was born, Mary wrapped him in a cloth and laid him in the manger.
“That night some shepherds were guarding their sheep in the fields outside the village when suddenly an angel appeared to them. The angel glowed with the glory of the Lord, and the shepherds were very afraid. ‘Don’t be afraid!’ the angel said. He then told them that he had come to bring them the best news that anyone had ever heard. This is the news that he gave them—the Savior, the Messiah, the Lord has been born tonight in Bethlehem. And then the angel told the shepherds to go to Bethlehem and to find the baby who would be wrapped in a cloth lying in a manger. Suddenly the angel was joined by a huge crowd of angels singing, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth to men of good will.’”
No sooner had Joy finished speaking than an ornament appeared on the tree much larger than the first two. The children looked inside the ornament and saw Mary and Joseph with the baby in the manger, and the shepherds in the fields with their sheep, and the angels filling the heavens. As they listened, the children heard the angels singing praises to God, and each child heard the praises sung in the language of his own country. Such joy filled the auditorium that the children began to praise God with the angels, and they sang, “Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth to men of good will!” Each child sang in the language of his own country, and the voices of the children sounded like the voices of the angels.
When the singing had ended, Joy said, “The shepherds went to Bethlehem to see the child, and when they had found him, they worshiped him. Then they told everyone what had happened and what the angel had told them about the child.
“At about that same time, some wise men from the East arrived in Jerusalem asking, ‘Where is the newborn King of the Jews?’ They told King Herod that they had seen a great star in the heavens that had led them there so that they could worship the baby, but the star had disappeared. King Herod was an evil king, and he did not know about the baby Jesus who was the Son of God. Herod called in the religious leaders, and they told him that a prophecy had been given by the prophet Micah that the baby would be born in the town of Bethlehem.”
“The wicked King Herod then called in the wise men from the East and told them to go to Bethlehem and find the child. ‘When you have found him,’ he said, ‘come back to Jerusalem and tell me where he is so that I can worship him too,’ but Herod had lied when he said that he wanted to worship the baby; he was really planning to kill him.
“After the wise men left Herod, they saw the star again and followed it to the house where Mary and Joseph and the baby were living. When they saw the baby Jesus, they fell down before him and worshiped him. Then they gave him gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh. Afterwards, they returned to their own land, but they did not return to King Herod because God had warned them in a dream to go home another way.”
At that moment a fourth ornament appeared on the tree, and the children could see the wise men from the East riding their camels inside the ornament. Ahead of the wise men was a star so bright and beautiful that it made the children’s hearts leap with joy just to look at it. And the children could hear the wise men worshiping Jesus and praising God for sending His Son to the people of the earth.
Joy looked at the children for a moment before she spoke. Then she said, “This is the story of Christmas: God sent His son to earth to live among us so that we could know Him and love Him and accept Him as our Savior. If anyone comes to Jesus, He forgives him of his sins and gives him an abundant life here on earth and eternal life with God in Heaven.”
Joyce Swann is a nationally-known author and speaker. Her personal story of homeschooling her own ten children from the first grade through masters' degrees before their seventeenth birthdays is told in her book, Looking Backward: My Twenty-Five Years as a Homeschooling Mother. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net/ or like her on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/frontier2000mediagroup.
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