38 pages • 1 hour read
The Best Christmas Pageant Ever
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Summary
Background
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Tools
BetaChapters 1-2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
The unnamed narrator of the story, a young girl, introduces the reader to the six awful Herdman children: Ralph, Imogene, Leroy, Claude, Ollie, and Gladys. As a brief introduction, she relates the story of the Herdmans playing with a stolen “young Einstein” chemistry set (2). When Leroy mixed the powders wrong and lit them on fire, it caused a fire that burned down Fred Shoemaker’s decrepit, rat-infested tool house. The fire chief lectured a group of kids about safety. The Herdmans learned only that a disaster could lead to free donuts, which had been brought for the firefighters.
The narrator doesn’t understand why the Herdmans lingered on the scene since they were probably guilty. Her father said it was the only good thing the Herdsman kids ever did because the tool house was ugly and dangerous.
The Herdmans live above an unused garage at the bottom of Sproul Hill. They don’t know where their father is. He left them early on, and Mrs. Herdsman works at the shoe factory. She tells Miss Phillips, a social worker, that she’d rather work than be with her kids.
They have rocks and poison ivy for a yard and a “BEWARE OF CAT” sign. The cat has one eye, a crooked tail, and one leg that’s too short. The mailman thinks they caught it to make it even more wild, and there are rumors that it’s a bobcat. Claude took the cat to “Show and Tell” once. The cat ate the class goldfish and Ramona’s pet mice, which she had brought to show the class.
The Herdmans don’t take school seriously but never get held back. The next kid is always on the way into a new grade, and no teacher could abide two of them in one room. One of Imogene’s talents is blackmail. She always finds out what everyone weighs and then announces the numbers at inappropriate times, such as when an overweight boy is about to get on a swing.
Imogene loves to collect people’s secrets and makes up secrets when she doesn’t know any real ones. Gladys, the youngest Herdman, is also the meanest because she learns from everyone else in her family. Then, they become involved with the narrator’s mother and the Christmas pageant.
Chapter 2 Summary
Mother makes the narrator and her brother, Charlie, participate in the pageant. Every year, their father protests—he’s already seen it, and it never changes. Mother takes over pageant duties when Mrs. Armstrong breaks her leg.
A girl named Alice Wendleken is always Mary. The narrator and most of the kids are always angels in the choir. Unhelpfully, the narrator’s father suggested they could just show movies of Yellowstone National Park instead of the pageant.
Once a month, on Sundays, the little kids sing for an extra 15 minutes. Then, their teacher asks them to write or draw what they like best about Sunday school for a change of pace. Most of the answers are predictable, but Charlie’s favorite thing about Sunday School is that the Herdmans aren’t there.
Now, the narrator blames Charlie for the Herdmans coming to church. Leroy stole Charlie’s dessert three times at school. Finally, Charlie tried to act like he didn’t care, claiming that the desserts at Sunday school were even better. The Herdmans came the next Sunday, looking for food, and Imogene stole from the collection basket.
Mr. Grady announces the pageant. Alice, hoping to keep her role, hopes that the narrator won’t be Mary now that her mother is in charge. Imogene is intrigued by the idea of the pageant. The Herdmans love sneaking into movies, so a pageant might also be enjoyable. Imogene isn’t surprised when the narrator tells her that the pageant is about Jesus.
Chapters 1-2 Analysis
This section introduces the characters, the themes, and the story’s narrative tone. Chapter 1 sets the humorous tone immediately with an unflinching description of the Herdmans’ villainy:
The Herdmans were absolutely the worst kids in the history of the world. They lied and stole and smoked cigars (even the girls) and talked dirty and hit little kids and cussed their teachers and took the name of the Lord in vain and set fire to Fred Shoemaker’s old broken-down toolhouse (1).
The Herdmans’ environment—and even their cat—is an extension of them, or at least the way the town sees them. By introducing the Herdmans in such an unflattering way, Robinson begins to foreshadow the theme of Perspective and Judgment that runs throughout the story.
The narrator never expresses hatred for the Herdmans, and there’s little sign that any of them—even Imogene—ever focus on her. Nevertheless, she doesn’t pretend that they are kinder, softer, or better than they are. This matters because her perspective as narrator is the only viewpoint to which the reader has access. She often quotes others, which helps give a broader view of how the people in town think about them. Alice, in particular, will show a vicious streak that is the opposite of charitable Christianity.
Christianity hinges on the idea that Christ paid a price so everyone can be redeemed or saved. Although few details are given about their history, the Herdmans have no authority figures and are shown no overt kindnesses other than the ham they receive at Christmas. It’s hard to imagine characters more in need of some form of redemption or less likely to receive it from their neighbors or schoolmates. The theme of Redemption will peak during the pageant when Imogene cries during “Silent Night.”
Chapter 1 also shows that the Herdmans have a knack for occasionally getting a good result from a bad act. For instance, when they burn down the tool house, the narrator’s father says, “It was the only good thing the Herdmans ever did, and if they’d known it was a good thing, they wouldn’t have done it at all. They would have set fire to something else…or somebody” (3). Thanks to the Herdmans, Shoemaker’s ugly tool house is gone, an intended but useful consequence.
The narrator’s father serves as a composite of all adults who reluctantly attend functions that they would prefer to ignore: “He went every year but it was always a struggle, and Mother said that was her contribution to the Christmas pageant—getting my father to go to it” (15). He embodies the theme of Tradition. He goes to the pageant every year, putting little thought into it beyond the routine. The children at church have a similar, unthinking adherence to tradition, although their examples are usually on a smaller scale. For instance, the narrator says, “Most of us spent all week in school being pounded and poked and pushed around by Herdmans, and we looked forward to Sunday as a real day of rest” (19).
Now that Sundays will include the Herdmans, the most provocative source of tension is how they will integrate themselves into the pageant.
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