Pageants Bring Personal Touch to Ageless Story

On the night before Christmas, churches throughout Los Angeles were looking to the young to illustrate the ageless story of Jesus.

Two teenage sisters in Redondo Beach were cast in a children’s pageant of the Nativity. An 8-year-old pianist was to take the stage in Woodland Hills for a solo rendition of “O Holy Night.” And in Pasadena, an unwed young mother moved down the center aisle with her newborn son, playing the roles of Mary and Jesus.

“For the young kids, this shows the real reason for Christmas,” said Deacon Richard Shinkle of St. James Catholic Church in Redondo Beach, one of a number of parishes where teenagers and children are given roles acting out--or singing about--the events of the first Christmas.

For many young people, the chance to perform was a chance to give in a way that does not come from a mall. Young pianist Penelope Gillette, 8, felt that way shortly before her solo performance of “O Holy Night” during services at Woodland Hills Neighborhood Church, where her family has been part of the congregation for 13 years.

“It’s like my birthday present for Jesus since I just can’t give him a gift like I bought him something,” Penelope said. “I know he’s going to hear it in the church.”

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To prepare for the moment, Penelope had spent two months practicing, 20 minutes every day--a ritual she sometimes found boring. But Christmas Eve offered the chance to try out the brand-new church piano, and she found she wasn’t too nervous about being in front of a large crowd.

“I pretend that there’s one person there that I’m playing it for,” she said. “There’s one person sitting next to me and nobody else. Nobody’s watching me, I’m just practicing.”

The act of reaching out, bringing in the young souls who represent the future of today’s churches, is important both for them and for the church, some clergymen said.

“You’ve got so much emphasis on the secular side: the money, gifts and shopping,” said Shinkle, a deacon who began staging Christmas pageants for youngsters 20 years ago in Oak Ridge, Tenn. “This day and age, we need to put a little emphasis on the spiritual side: that our Lord came.”

Shinkle recalled starting his own three daughters--now grown--in annual roles as angels and shepherds. He watched one young boy become so inspired that he heard the calling; the young man is now a priest in Knoxville.

For the past 10 years, Shinkle has been organizing the children’s pageant at St. James, a church on Pacific Coast Highway that is packed with 1,200 people for Christmas Eve Mass.

A red-haired baby girl played the infant Jesus during the afternoon Mass. Shinkle chose Megan Swartzfager in spite of her gender, much to the delight of her parents.

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“We were thrilled,” said her mother, Margaret, who heard the news on her answering machine about the same time as her husband Jon. She called him immediately. “I said, ‘Guess what! Guess what!’ He said, ‘Megan’s baby Jesus!’ ”

The same service featured two sisters, Jessica and Michelle Rifi, in reprise roles as Mary and the archangel. They were keyed up, knowing that the huge crowd would be watching every move.

Michelle, 14, had to carry the baby with angel-like softness across the expanse of the church, keeping careful pace with the words of the sermon. As worshipers were being told of Mary giving birth, Michelle was to gently hand the baby over to Jessica, who, as Mary, would wrap the infant in swaddling clothes and place her in a carrier at the center of the manger scene.

The chance of goofing up is always there. Second-grader Thomas Griego, 7, thinks about that. His role Friday in the Mass at Mary Star of the Sea Catholic Church in San Pedro was his biggest public performance since the student talent show at Lunada Bay Elementary School, where he, like Penelope, played the piano.

This time, though, he was carrying in the baby Jesus in the form of a wooden doll that had to be presented, just so, to a child playing Mary.

“When I go down the aisle, I have to look straight ahead,” he said, keenly mindful of his duties after only one rehearsal. “I come out and kneel down on the floor and have to pay attention and look at the angels. I have to make sure I look up.”

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At some churches, large numbers of youngsters took part in elaborate Nativity scenes. St. James, for example, featured 19 youngsters, including two infants. In other churches, the casts were sometimes smaller, but no less emotional.

Johanna Moore, 21, and her son, born in October, would normally have been automatic selections to play the roles of Mary and Jesus at the Christmas Eve services at Pasadena’s All Saints Episcopal Church.

But until the official call came earlier this month, Moore wondered whether she would be overlooked because she is unmarried.

“I don’t fit the profile most churches have for a role model,” a happy Moore said before she and her son, Andrew, entered the stately chambers of the church before a full house of 1,300 worshipers.

The silent and mostly ceremonial role--sitting at the altar while the Rev. Ed Bacon delivered the familiar Christmas story of Christ’s birth--was for her a deeply meaningful personal moment. Finally, she felt wholly reunited with the church she had attended as a child.

“There are a lot of two-parent, married, older families 1/8here 3/8,” she said of the congregation. “It’s nice to be recognized and embraced.”

Times staff writer Ann L. Kim contributed to this story.