Sarah Evans: Familiarity of festive story
Dec 17 2009 By Sarah Evans
It was good to read a few years ago that faith leaders across the country had agreed that no one could possibly be offended by the celebration of the Christmas story in schools at this time of year.
School nativity plays and carol concerts dominate the end of term and just when teachers and children believe they simply can’t do a thing more, they find the magic of angel wings, O Come All Ye Faithful and plastic babies bring their own miraculous energy surge.
These Christmas rituals fly in the face of current educational orthodoxy because their delight lies in exactly what is not supposed to happen – things staying the same. The school inspection regime is based on the premise that anything that matters in school will be in a state of constantly improving flux.
At the periphery, this may be the case. The most stable Christmas service with which I was involved was a Christingle one held every year in the wonderful, unspoilt 18th century church in West Yorkshire. Exactly the same preparation took place each year, exactly the same year groups performed the same roles and the same service was conducted with the same hymns. The climax was the lighting of the candles. The four-year-olds up to the oldest member of staff had their orange with a lighted candle. But even within this traditionalism, the principle of improvement can prevail – as it did after I watched a particularly naughty girl seated in the middle of a crowded row move her candle nearer and nearer to the plait of the girl sitting in front of her. From then onwards we had buckets of water at the end of every row.
Essentially, though, it is the familiarity of celebrations that is their significance. Schools have a hugely important role to play in giving children a sense of continuity. There can increasingly seem a total lack of stability in their world, where life is about the constant rush to find next big new thing. One major function of schools is to provide an unchanging core against which all the vicissitude that goes on in their lives can be judged and anchored.
Schools may feel the need to modernise the nativity story making it more ‘relevant’ but sometimes it is familiarity that is the relevance.
* Sarah Evans is headteacher at King Edwards VI Girls School, Edgbaston.
