None of this is required. It's just what has worked for us over eight Decembers, plus a few good ideas other churches have sent us. Everything here can be found in a closet, a garage or a church basement. The total cost of our production last year was eleven dollars, and nine of that was tinsel.

Costumes

Shepherds: A bathrobe, a towel and a necktie. That's the whole costume, and it's been the whole costume in church basements for as long as anyone can remember. Put the towel over the child's head and tie it on with the necktie around the forehead, knot in back. Striped towels look best. Plain brown or striped bathrobes are better than plaid, and absolutely no robes with cartoon characters on them; we had a Ninja Turtle shepherd in 1993 and it's all anyone remembers about that year. A walking stick or a broom handle makes a staff. Bare feet or sandals, if your floor allows it. Tell the parents in November so nobody is buying a bathrobe on December 20th.

The Old Shepherd gets a cotton-ball beard, glued to a strip of felt and tied on with yarn. Make two. The first one always falls off at dress rehearsal.

The Hungry Shepherd needs a small loaf of bread or a dinner roll, real, in a little cloth bag. He has to drop it in Scene 3. Expect it to be eaten before Scene 6.

Angels: A white choir robe if your church has extras, or an old white sheet with a hole cut for the head and a cord tied at the waist. Halos are tinsel twisted around a wire coat hanger bent into a circle, with the hook straightened and taped down the back of the robe. Gold tinsel garland on the sleeves. The New Angel's halo should be a little bit crooked on purpose. The Senior Angel's should be very straight.

Sheep: White sweatshirt and sweatpants, and a headband with two ears cut from white felt and stapled on. If you have the patience, glue cotton balls to the sweatshirt. We don't have the patience. Pepita wears a red ribbon around her neck with a small jingle bell on it. This is not for the audience. This is so the shepherds, and you, can always hear where she is.

Mary wears a blue robe or a blue sheet over a long dress, and a blue or white scarf over her hair. Joseph is dressed like a shepherd, but in a darker robe, so the audience can tell him apart.

The Star is a star cut out of poster board, about two feet across, covered in aluminum foil and taped to the top of a broom handle. The child holding it stands on a sturdy chair behind Mary and Joseph. Switch arms during the carols.

The Stepladder

This is the part people write to us about most. Our New Angel appears on a four-foot aluminum stepladder, the kind every church has in the janitor's closet, with a white sheet draped over it so it looks like a cloud, or at least like a stepladder under a sheet. Our rules:

• The angel stands on the second step. Never higher. Two steps up is plenty to look like heaven from the pews.
• A grown-up crouches behind the ladder and holds it the whole time the angel is on it. That grown-up is usually Robert.
• Practice getting up and down at every rehearsal, not just the dress rehearsal.
• Bring the lights up bright the moment the angel appears. If you can, shine one lamp right at the ladder. That's the "shining" part.

A church in Oregon told us they used a hay wagon instead, with the angel choir sitting on the hay. We liked that very much, and we don't have a hay wagon.

Props and Set

• The campfire: a flashlight lying on its back, covered with crumpled red, orange and yellow tissue paper, inside a ring of rocks or bricks. Never a real candle on the floor with children in bathrobes.
• The manger: a wooden apple crate or a laundry basket, with straw or crumpled brown paper.
• The baby: a doll wrapped in a white pillowcase, or a real baby if a church family volunteers one. We've done both. A real baby is wonderful until the angel choir starts singing.
• The scroll: a sheet of paper rolled up and tied with ribbon. Tape the New Angel's lines inside it. Nobody will know.
• The screen: any folding screen, or a bedsheet hung over a clothesline between two music stands.
• Hay bales, if you can get them, for the shepherds to sit on. In Las Cruces they're easy to come by in December. If you can't, pillows covered with burlap.

Where the Carols Go

We don't print the carols here, since every church has its own hymnal and its own favorite verses. These are the ones we use and where we put them. Swap in your own if you like.

The play itself runs about fifteen minutes. With all six carols, plan on twenty-five to thirty, which is about right for a Sunday evening program before the cookies. If you need it shorter, "The First Noel" can be played on the piano without singing while the shepherds walk, and "Joy to the World" can be the closing song by itself. Some churches like to end with "Silent Night" instead, with the lights down. That's lovely too. If you hand out candles for it, please don't give them to the sheep.

Rehearsals

We rehearse four Sunday afternoons in a row, one hour each, starting the Sunday after Thanksgiving, then a dress rehearsal the Saturday before the program. Lines should be learned by the third rehearsal, but nobody has ever been sent home for forgetting one. The Narrator can always read from a binder covered in red or green paper, and that's how we do it every year. Some other things we've learned:

• Rehearse the three "PEPITA!" shouts first. It gets everyone laughing and loud, and after that nobody is shy.
• Tell your Pepita she is allowed, and in fact required, to wander. Show her where to wander to. Then, when she wanders somewhere else during the performance, the shepherds will handle it, because that's what the play is about.
• Put the littlest sheep and angels where their parents can see them from the pews. They will wave. Let them wave.
• Practice the New Angel's "too loud, too soft, just right" until it gets a laugh from the other children. It will get a bigger one from the grown-ups.
• If a child freezes, the nearest shepherd says the line for them, or says, "What were you going to say?" and waits. The audience never minds. They are all somebody's grandmother.
• Have one grown-up whose only job, the night of the program, is to sit in the front pew and smile at whoever is talking.

One Last Thing

On the night of our program, our church lines the front walk with luminarias, paper bags with a little sand and a candle inside, the way churches and families do all over New Mexico at Christmas. After the last carol the children go out and stand along the walk in their costumes while everyone leaves, and the shepherds wave goodnight to every car. If your weather allows it, try something like that. If you're in Minnesota, we understand, and we're sending you our warmest wishes from a place where it's sometimes sixty degrees on Christmas Eve, and our shepherds sweat in their bathrobes.

God bless your program, and your Pepita.

Robert & Connie