I viewed the whole thing with the a mixture of awe, excitement, a sliver of dread, and a perpetual mouthful of suppressed laughter. It's a lot like the Grand Wa-Hoo of a pageant once headed up by mother when I was but 15 years old, only this was kind of...more...bananas. Purely nuts. Worlds fail.
But still, I will try. It was a church-wide pageant thingy, with performances from the Slightly Older Ladies, the preschoolers, the low elementaries, the upper elementaries, the teenagers, and one final medley by a ukulele choir. (Side note: ukulele choirs must be a thing in Korea. This is the second one I've seen since October.)
Let's start at the real beginning, though. Let's start at Yuchibu service. "Preschoolers" in Korean is 유치부, and Yuchibu is one cute way to spell in in English, and not as sugary as Yoochiboo, maybe.
We rehearsed our songs, I wiped a bakers' dozen of little noses, and I was taken over by Seongwoon the Baby Tornado. He has made me into his class-mom, meaning that I'm his base of operations. If he's hurt he'll come running to me, he spends 50% of his time in my lap, and if he returns to find another lap-occupant in his chosen place, he will simply add himself to the pile and let me sort out the issue of how to keep them from suffocating each other.
He's rather like a cat, really. And a lot like my younger brother, too--a force to be reckoned with. And he was in fine flying-formation today. Much to my surprise, he kept his socks on, but he did keep tackling his hyung when hyung was trying to rehearse his song for the play. I had to lock Tornado Baby in a fireman's carry over my shoulder, just to keep him from launching himself at his big brother and taking him out every five minutes.
And Seongwoon and I also just spent a lot of time looking at each other's faces, smiling. I told him he was wonderful (in Korean). He told me he was an airplane (in Korean). I nodded my agreement. I have no way of knowing what my future kids will be like, but in the same way that I knew two years ago that I'd be assigned to work at an all-boys middle school when they're relatively rare, I now strongly suspect that my future offspring will be contain at least one Seongwoon. The kind of child that's 100% strong and active, 100% sweet and affectionate, and altogether exhausting and lovely.
So Seongwoon times today were good, as was time with my sidekick Hyoeun, a lovely little girl who has seen enough princess movies to decide that she knows who I really am. You can't fool her. White women who smile a lot, have long hair, and sing for no reason exist in Disney movies, so that is what I am to her. Hyoeun is loving and smart and always at my side, and I'm proud to be her friend.
After an hour, I left to go to lunch, them came back at 1 pm to find the kids in the preschool room completely transformed.
Feathers and halos adorned 8 of the girls. Yohan was dressed as Mary's Horse--not a donkey, but a horse. Hangyeol wore a crown and robe and was undoubtedly King Herod--the most accurate casting decision in the history of the Yuchibu. (I don't dislike Hangyeol, but I do find him amusing, because he's bossy and overpowering and manages to always be doing what he shouldn't. That's almost a talent.)
And then there were the witch hats.
Glaringly, inexplicably, there in the midst of the preschoolers were two boys dressed in witch costumes.
Erm. Could this be an attempt at a "magician" costume, since the wise men were "magi"? But I saw other kids in more traditional Wiseman garb. And there were only two boys in these. And the witch costumes were accented with large swaths of gold collar trim and gold-spangled stars, like the Pittsburgh Steelers of wizardry. After doing an image search, I found the exact outfit they wore:
Pictured: Nothing You've Ever Seen at An Alabama Pageant
It was only during the play that I saw they were King Herod's "advisers" and that their strange outfits actually highlighted the way that their advice was not to be trusted. Or at least, that's how I chose to make sense of our jaunt through A Very Halloween Christmas.
But that wasn't the only unusual thing that I noticed about the childrens' appearances.
In the one hour I'd been gone, makeup had been applied to all 45 kids. Had been applied with a heavy hand, and regardless of gender. A swipe of silverish shine-powder adorned every child's face, giving them definition. The apples of their cheeks held a Red Delicious blush, and their identically bright cherry lipstick was visible from fifty yards away.
The girls looked ready for a ballet performance, and the boys like they'd taken up a side career selling Avon. Most of the boys had had their hair shellacked back with styling gel, too, either to allow us to see more of their faces or to be extra K-poppy.
1/3rd of the kids were in costumes for the short nativity play, and all the others were going to sing one of two songs, divided into Big Preschool and Little Preschool. In preparation for these songs, they all had white gloves on, fastened around their hands with tinsel wire.
This Stuff.
On the top of each had was a giant shiny paper star, which flopped around precariously, held in place by fabric glue.
ALSO....half of them were wearing tiny top hats.
LIKE SO.
Anyhover, I was completely flabbergasted and had to instantly hide both the flabber and the gast, so my fellow teachers would not see how weird I thought this was.
We marched our little bedazzled troop downstairs to the main sanctuary to practice. The first hour (1-2 PM) was spent trying to keep them from climbing over the pews or starting fights. The second hour and thereafter was spent trying to keep them awake. It was afternoon and post-lunch and they'd had their fill of running and fighting, which means they crashed hard.
Little Minseo, a lovely and incredibly small child of about 3 years old, crawled into my lap while the other age groups were performing and it took me ten minutes to realize she was asleep. Dead sleep, too--I could shift her to my other arm and she wouldn't rouse.
In the sleepy confusion, the kids began to lose their makeup. Lipstick smudge-prints began to appear on everybody's white shirts. They rubbed their faces and got blush all over their palms. Their tinsel stars began to fall out and their feathers shed a bit, so by the time they sang they were a tweensy bit bedraggled from the long wait, but they still nailed their performances.
The performances from the other age groups were sweet and charming. And also quite shocking, because in my experience of being brought up in the church, dancing is simply not done--preferably not done by anyone at any time in any location, but most-certainly-definitely not done in church by church people.
All those rules go out the window in Korea. Dance is a staple of church events. The only groups that did not dance were the Slightly Older Ladies and the Ukulele Choir. Both our preschool songs were fully choreographed, mostly with cute hand motions and jumps, but with one questionably appropriate movement. Repeat this statement for all 3 of the elementary songs and for the teenage song, too. If you get uncomfortable with the dancing, you just look away. There's nothing to be done about it.
Add to this the fact that the opening sequence of our pageant was two high-school girls singing "All I Want For Christmas Is You".
I...I didn't know what to think. I adore "All I Want For Christmas Is You"--it's a favorite of mine. But it's romantic. It's not for church. I also like "Can't Help Falling In Love With You," but I wouldn't sing it in front of the congregation. So I decided to clap along lightly and smile at the girls on the stage, because they were clearly worried and having a hard time, trying to sing in another language in front of a large crowd.
IN ADDITION TO THIS, I was wondering how we would somehow worth the soundtrack of the film "Frozen" into our pageant. Because this in Korea, and Frozen music finds its way into everything from food commercials to high school graduations. Given enough time, we will definitely discover a path to our musical goal. And we did.
"Let It Go" was played as a violin and cello duet by two of our college students, used as a backdrop to a slideshow about Jesus' birth, depicting the entire nativity story. I didn't even try to force the lyrics of "Let It Go" to connect in any way with anything from the Bible. It's not meant to. This song is just something that happens at large event, and people expect to hear it.
But, we did also sing all 4 verses of the songs Hark the Herald Angels Sing, Joy to the World, Angels We Have Heard on High, and O Come All Ye Faithful. And I cried a little bit because I remembered how much my God loves me and how he come to the world for me. And how I should adore him and worship him in his beauty.
I don't know, sometimes even in the flat-out stangest circumstances, the Lord's glory shines through. It did for me today.
So! Thus went my first Christmas pageant in Korea. Here's to the future, and to many, many more.
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