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Chapter Text

The Southside Serpents were the meanest kids at Riverdale Middle School. They lied and cheated and stole and swore and pushed littler kids down on the playground and smoked cigarettes in the bathrooms. They talked back to teachers and chewed gum in class and fought each other behind the gymnasium until their faces and fists were all bruised and bloody, and then they went to class with their noses dripping blood all over the desks. They all lived in or around the trailer park, and Hal Cooper’s mom said they were all going to grow up to be pot-smoking delinquents one day, which was the very worst thing in the world you could be in Prudence Cooper’s opinion. There were three of them in Hal’s grade, and Alice Smith was the meanest of them all, because she hung out with FP Jones and a kid called Tall Boy, and that made her the brains of the operation by default. 

Alice had long, scraggly blonde hair down to her butt, and pointy elbows and knees that were always covered in scabs. She did just about every rotten thing you could imagine, including stealing Penelope Blossom’s expensive charm bracelet during gym class and throwing it up on the roof of the high school. Tall Boy’s real name was Herbert, but he would clobber anyone who called him that, even a teacher. He was thirteen years old and still in the fourth grade, and he had the nickname Tall Boy because he was so tall that the school board wouldn’t let him on the basketball team anymore, because the parents of all the actual fourth-graders got together and complained their kids were too scared to try out. And FP Jones had been in Hal’s class since preschool, and Hal had never ever seen him crack a smile. 

Everyone in town knew the Southside kids were bad, but maybe no one knew just how bad until they started that fire that burned down the tool shed behind the Riverdale First United Church. Everybody knew right away who was responsible when the fire trucks came, because the only thing in the world the three of them really loved was fire and smoking. Alice chain-smoked cigarettes like a grown man, and if you went into the girls bathroom between the middle school gym and the trophy case, it smelled permanently like the Marlboro Reds she carried around. FP was always clicking his silver lighter with his initials on it, and Tall Boy just plain liked to watch things burn up. One of his favourite hobbies was starting fires in trash barrels in the trailer park and throwing fireworks in to see how scary the explosion would be. 

Hal wasn’t sure they’d actually meant to burn the whole toolshed to the ground, but maybe they had. After all, you could only clobber each other for so long before you started looking for a new means of entertainment. One of the cops who responded to the scene got them all together and asked if they knew how the fire started, but Tall Boy and FP were smart enough to keep their mouths shut and let Alice do the talking. They were still all there hanging around the burnt up toolshed because Hal’s mom had brought out donuts for all the volunteer firemen, and Hal guessed they figured out wherever they set a fire there was going to be donuts sooner or later. 

No one knew how the Southside kids had done it, but everyone knew it had to be them, just like everyone knew that in second grade FP had stolen the class milk money right out of the teacher’s desk, even though they never found it. FP skipped a ton of school right after that money went missing, and you could just bet he was down at the five-and-dime, spending it all on fireworks and cigarettes. Then again, maybe not, because those three had shoplifting from the five-and-dime down to a science, so you had to wonder why they’d waste money paying for the stuff they usually just took. 

Of the three of them, Hal ran in with FP the most, and that was because Hal’s mom packed him chocolate-chip cookies every day in his lunch. FP was a really surly kid, skinny and mean, and he’d punch you just for looking at him wrong. The main reason everyone was scared of him was because he stole other kids’ lunches so reliably that most of the fourth graders had to ask their parents to pack them extra. Every time Hal had his mom’s cookies in his lunch, FP swooped right in and offered him a choice: handing over those cookies, or a knuckle sandwich delivered to his face. 

Well, the right answer to that was pretty obvious, so FP always wound up with Hal’s dessert, or at least until he learned Darryl Doiley’s mom packed him those fudge brownies with the little sprinkles, which FP liked even more than cookies. He was the dirtiest kid Hal had ever met, so much like Pig-Pen from Peanuts that you expected to see stink lines coming off of him, and Hal always privately wondered why FP didn’t buy any shampoo or soap when he took all that money. Probably he wasn’t interested because you couldn’t eat it, smoke it, or blow it up. 

Basically whenever something went wrong in town those three Southside kids were involved, and all the parents on the neighbourhood watch committee probably would have made a bigger deal out of that fire if Hal’s mom hadn’t been pestering the church board to tear down the First United toolshed anyway. She said it was an eyesore, and it brought down the property value of Main Street, which was otherwise very nice and lined with pretty maple trees. Prudence told Hal’s dad it was the only good thing the Southsiders ever did for the town, and if they’d known it was a good thing, they probably would have started the fire right in the church itself. That was the kind of kids they were. 

Since they were so all-around awful at school, everyone welcomed Sundays as a day of rest from being pushed and pummelled all week. You never had to watch your back at Sunday school, because church was one place you could be sure you’d never see a Southside Serpent. They cussed and stole and beat people up so often that you could hardly expect them to be interested in a book that had commandments about how you shouldn’t do any of that stuff. And they certainly didn’t own any clothes like the ones Hal and his sister Gertrude had to wear to church: button-up shirts and dresses with pressed collars. Hal never really thought about it, but if he had, he would have figured church was about the last place on earth the three of them would ever turn up. 

But it turned out he was wrong. 

It started because one day at lunch, Hal, Fred Andrews, Hermione Gomez, and Penelope and Claudius Blossom were talking about the annual Christmas pageant.

The Blossom family was extremely Catholic, and ordinarily wouldn’t be caught dead within ten feet of Riverdale United, only earlier that year Claudius Blossom had threatened to run off and join the circus if his parents didn’t support his desire to be an actor, and Hal figured the Blossoms decided their kid being in another church’s Christmas pageant was better than him being in the circus. But not by much. 

Mary Moore, Hermione’s best friend, was sitting behind them eating a tuna-fish sandwich with tomatoes, and Fred swivelled around in his seat to look at her. “Why don’t you join the Christmas pageant, Mary? You would be really good. And if you played Mary, you wouldn’t have to change your name.” 

“I’m Jewish, you dolt.” Mary told him. “And I wouldn’t want to play Mary anyway. All she does is sit there.” 

“Exactly,” Hermione said, patting her hair and gloating. “Mary needs to be someone who can sit still and look very beautiful.” 

The casting for the Christmas pageant was the same every year. The littlest kids were baby angels, the boys were shepherds, the girls got stuck in the angel choir, and three bigger kids got to carry the gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Hal always had to be an angel, because his mom ran the pageant and said he looked just darling in the white robe. And Hal’s friend Fred was always Joseph, because he had big brown eyes and dimples when he smiled and his big brother Oscar had played Joseph every year from third grade up until he started growing facial hair. Oscar was the most well-behaved Joseph Riverdale United Church had ever had and Hal’s mom almost cried when he went to the high school youth group and couldn’t be in the pageant anymore. 

The role of Mary always went to whatever girl was the oldest and holiest-looking, and Hal guessed Hermione figured this year it would be her turn again. Last year all the church ladies had ooh-ed and ahh-ed over how lovely she looked in the blue Mary dress, and even Hal had to admit she looked so natural in it that it made you forget the dress was just a great big pillowcase with holes cut for the head and arms. Plus, the last time another girl had volunteered for Mary in front of Hermione, she spread such nasty rumours around the third grade about her that the girl moved to a new school in the spring and didn’t come back. So no one else was exactly eager for the job. 

Hermione poked Hal. “Is your mom going to be running the pageant again this year?” she asked in a sickly-sweet voice. You could tell she was gearing up to ask if Prudence needed a reminder of how good she’d been as Mary last year. 

“I think so,” said Hal, even though it was pretty much a sure thing. Prudence Cooper always volunteered to run the Christmas pageant, because she didn’t trust anyone else to do it properly. One year, when Prudence was just on the flower-sale and pot-luck committees, the choir director in charge of the pageant tried to incorporate a dance number with big plastic candy-canes. Well, the only reason he did that was because enough kids in Sunday School that year also took tap-dancing lessons to make it look good, but Hal’s mom was so enraged about it that she marched down to Reverend Henry’s office and made him take it out. She even wrote an article about it in the paper, calling it sacrilege and against the spirit of Christmas. And then the choir director ended up going off to work at some other church, but Prudence still took charge of the pageant every year, just in case. 

That was when Alice, FP and Tall Boy walked down the centre cafeteria aisle past where they were sitting. Hal tensed up in case one of them walloped him in the head - all three of them were always doing that when they walked behind you - but Alice stopped a few feet from their table, and it looked like she was listening. She walked up to their table and stood holding her tray over Penelope’s head. 

“What are you talking about?” Alice said. Her voice was loud and bossy and made you want to answer her quickly, in case she walloped you for taking too long. 

“Nothing you’d be interested in,” said Hermione in a snooty voice. Hal thought they would walk away. But FP suddenly plopped down next to Fred and set out his lunch, which that day happened to be Manny Muggs’ soda pop and Darryl Doiley’s brownies, so Alice swung her leg over the bench and sat down so close to Hal that her leg was shoved up against his. 

“I wanna know what you’re talking about,” she said. Her leg was hot against Hal’s, and her pointy knee was jabbing into his shin. She had the pointiest knees of anyone Hal had ever met. Penelope was on Alice’s other side, and she squirmed away so fast you’d have thought Alice had a disease. 

“We’re talking about the Christmas pageant,” Hermione explained. She was clearly torn between ignoring Alice and rubbing it in her face that she knew something Alice didn’t. 

“The hell is that?” said Tall Boy. 

“It’s for church.” 

Hal’s mom thought none of the kids from the trailer park had parents who had ever heard of church, and from the blank looks on their faces, she was probably right. Tall Boy scratched his head while FP took a big swig from his stolen coke and burped. But Alice actually seemed interested. 

“What do you do at church?” Alice demanded, looking right at Hal. “I mean, do you get anything?” 

Then Darryl Doiley, who had been the target of FP’s lunch stealing all week, finally snapped. 

“We get all the sandwiches we want,” he declared, glaring at FP. “And cookies and cake and punch and brownies. So I don’t even care when you take those brownies, because we have better ones at church. But you’ll never know because they don’t let kids like you in.” 

Well, that was the biggest mistake anyone had ever made, because a surefire way to get the Serpents to show up somewhere was to promise them food. Everyone had learned that during the toolshed incident. So no one was at all surprised when the next Sunday at church the three of them filed in during communion, and everyone knew it was all Darryl Doiley’s fault. 

He chose the wrong week to get them interested in church too, because seeing all those little cubes of bread and cups of grape juice must have convinced them Riverdale United was an okay place to get a free snack. They came slinking into the back of the sanctuary halfway through the sermon, all three of them in filthy jeans and holey t-shirts, looking dirtier than ever, while Hal was up at the front helping his dad pass out the communion plates. 

Tall Boy must have drunk half the grape juice in the little tray, and FP shoved his whole dirty fist into the dish of bread when it came to him and grabbed a big handful. Then when the tray of little wafers for people with diabetes came around, he grabbed a big fistful of those too, and you could hear him chewing with his mouth open all the way at the front of the church. They didn’t interrupt the sermon or set the place on fire or do anything too awful, but Hal did see each of them sneak a handful of change out of the collection bin when it came their way, so at least they made some money out of it. 

Still, that probably would have been it for the Serpents at Riverdale United, if that hadn’t been the week Miss Shapely got up to make an announcement about the Christmas pageant, and if it hadn’t been for Gertrude Cooper’s combat boots. 

Miss Shapely was Hal’s Sunday School teacher, and everyone liked her because she was so young and soft-spoken that she never yelled at you like bony old Mrs. Haggly always had. Now Mrs. Haggly had retired to Florida, and everyone thought they were better off for it - even Reverend Henry. Hal had heard him say it to his dad one Sunday when they were all standing around after the sermon eating coffee cake. 

“Hello boys and girls,” Miss Shapely said over the sound of FP’s chewing. “I want to remind you all that next Sunday, we’ll be choosing the roles for our annual Christmas pageant. Now, there will be roles for everybody who is interested, and we want all our boys and girls to take part in the pageant. So be sure to tell your parents that you’ll be staying a little later after Sunday School next week. Thank you.” 

Usually it was Hal’s mom who made that announcement, only the reason that wasn’t happening was because earlier that week Gertrude had left her combat boots at the top of the stairs. Gertrude was in the seventh grade and had just started dressing like an individual, and Mrs. Cooper had been on her case all week about picking them up. Gertrude kept telling her mother she’d get around to it, but before she could do that, Hal’s mother tripped over them while she was rushing to answer the door and fell all the way to the bottom. 

Prudence was okay except for breaking her wrist when she landed, and she was so cross with Gertrude that she called her from the hospital waiting room to give her a lecture while she was waiting for her cast to be put on. And by the time the emergency room doctor was able to see her, she had already called everyone at the church and rearranged all of her holiday commitments. 

Usually at Christmas time, Prudence did just about everything at the church except preach. But now since she only had the use of one wrist, she decided to take her responsibilities down from four different volunteer activities to just three. She couldn’t give up the pot-luck dinner, and the ladies from the decorating committee just about begged her not to leave them in the lurch, and Prudence didn’t trust the gardening club to handle the annual poinsettia sales without her. So she ended up deciding she could let Miss Shapely handle the pageant just this one time, so long as there was no danger of any unusual dance numbers. 

“It breaks my heart to do it,” she told Hal’s dad, Lewis, over dinner. “Still, I’ve set such a fine example over the years that I'm sure she won’t have any trouble following what I’ve done.” 

But just in case, she decided to call Miss Shapely after dinner every night that week, just to give her pointers on how the pageant should be run. By Thursday, Miss Shapely had stopped picking up her phone. Gertrude said she’d probably got Caller ID just for Prudence’s calls. 

From the back of the church, Hal heard Alice lean over and poke Fred in the spine. 

“What’s it about?” she hissed, loud enough that you could hear her all the way down the sanctuary. Fred twisted around and whispered back to her, covering his mouth with his hand. Fred didn’t have much of an indoor voice either. 

“Jesus,” he said. “When he was a baby.” 

“Lame,” said Alice sourly, loud enough that Prudence cleared her throat in disapproval from where she was sitting between Gertrude and Hal. You had to wonder what Alice thought the pageant would be about, considering they were all sitting under a giant stained glass window showing Jesus and all the little children surrounded by bunnies and lambs. 

But next Sunday, when Miss Shapely was gathering the Sunday School kids in the auditorium, all three of them were back. And even though there weren’t any snacks set out, they seemed to be there to stay. 

Chapter Text

“So,” Miss Shapely said, looking around at the kids sitting at the front of the church and clapping her hands together. “I’m going to remind each of you what the roles are in our Christmas pageant. Most of them will be determined by what grade you’re in, but there are a few main parts to be cast, and we can decide all together who will play those. There are no small roles, and everyone will have a chance. All right?” 

They all nodded, and Hal shifted from butt cheek to butt cheek on the tile floor. Alice was sitting a few rows away from him, looking right at the side of Hal’s face. He looked at her, caught her eye, and then quickly looked away, blushing. Partly he was scared of being walloped, but also whenever Alice looked at him too long it made the hairs on the back of his neck tingle. 

“Now, the children in the primary class will be our angels,” Miss Shapely said, “and intermediate classes will be divided into angels and shepherds. Mrs Cooper tells me we ordinarily have our intermediate boys play the shepherds, but I think anyone who would like to play a shepherd should be allowed to be one, and vice versa. But there is one very important rule, and that is that anyone playing a shepherd must be mature enough not to hit others with their staff.” 

That was one of Prudence’s pointers, but as far as Hal knew no one had ever followed it. He may never have played a shepherd, but even he could tell the temptation to smack the canes around like hockey sticks was monumental. 

“Then we will need an angel chorus, and one person will play the Angel of the Lord. He or she is the angel who brings the good news of Jesus’ birth to the shepherds. Then, of course, we will need a Mary, a Joseph, and three kings.” 

Alice’s hand shot up. 

“Do you have to go to the washroom, Alice?” Miss Shapely asked. Hal guessed that was the only reason she could think of that Alice would have her hand up. 

“No,” said Alice. She pushed her tangled blonde hair back from her face. “I want to play Mary. And FP wants to be Joseph.” 

Well, you could have heard a pin drop after that proclamation, only FP shouted out: “No, I don’t!” 

“Yes you do!” Alice snapped back. 

“No, I don’t!” FP repeated, and Alice jabbed her bony elbow into his ribs with a thonk sound you could hear through the whole auditorium. It wasn’t hard to picture the two of them tussling up there with their ratty shoes and runny noses, black eyes under their hooded bathrobes, ruining the whole pageant. Everyone was staring at Miss Shapely, waiting for her to fix things, only she looked as stunned as if Alice had just hit her in the face. 

It was Fred who tried to come to everyone’s rescue. His hand shot up like a dart, but as was usual with Fred, he didn’t wait to be called on before he started talking. “Miss Shapely, I think FP should play one of the kings.” His eyes lit up. “And if I was a king too, I could show him how to do it.” 

Fred had always wanted to play one of the Three Kings, because each of the wise men got a solo part in the song. Joseph didn’t get to sing anything, except for Silent Night at the end. Hal wasn’t even sure he was supposed to do that, but Fred said it wouldn’t be Christmas if he didn’t sing Silent Night. And it always looked really nice with all of them up there singing, so no one ever tried to correct it. But Fred was just about bouncing up and down at the thought of doing that solo, and wasn’t even noticing the horrified way Hermione was looking at him. 

You could tell Miss Shapely would have taken any suggestion just then that didn’t involve FP Jones playing the father of Jesus Christ, so she grabbed onto that idea right away. “You’re right, Fred. FP would be a great king.” (Penelope gasped.) “Now, Alice-” 

“I want to be a king too!” Tall Boy bellowed. All the little kids sitting near him scooted away as quickly as their little wrists and bums would allow. He shoved his fist in the air for emphasis. “I want to be a king!” 

Miss Shapely looked concerned. “Maybe you’d like to be one of our shepherds.” That was a safe bet, because everyone who was just sort of there got shoved in the shepherd chorus. Poor Marcus Mason had been a shepherd every single year since preschool. 

“No, I don’t!” Tall Boy yelled, and then he considered it. “The shepherds get to carry the sticks, right?” 

So that was how Tall Boy and FP Jones ended up playing two of the three kings in the pageant, because Miss Shapely didn’t trust either of them to carry a cane without walloping someone into the hospital. Hal thought Fred was either the bravest or dumbest kid in the whole world for volunteering to be lumped in with FP and Tall Boy at rehearsals for the next five weeks. Hal might not know what Frankincense and Myrrh were, but he knew sure as shit Tall Boy would figure out a way to clobber you with them.

Then it was time to tell Alice she couldn’t play Mary, only Alice wasn’t taking no for an answer. 

“You said everyone had a chance,” she argued, “and we’d decide all together.” 

She glared around at the other kids, and right away Hal knew they had a problem. No one was brave enough to tell Alice they disagreed with her, and if it came down to a vote, you could bet Alice would tally up all the people that voted against her and clonk their heads on the playground come Monday. Kids were afraid of Hermione, but they were petrified of Alice. And Miss Shapely had said they’d decide all together, so she was stuck. 

“You can’t play Mary,” Hermione hissed, her face turning a dangerous shade of purple. “Mary is supposed to be beautiful and kind and clean. ” 

“Well, I know how to hold a baby,” Alice retorted. “I take care of Mrs. Murphy’s babies in the trailer park all the time.” 

“The baby Jesus isn’t some nasty old trailer park baby,” Hermione retorted. “And no one’s going to let their baby be in the pageant if you have to hold it.” 

She was right, of course. Once they found out who was playing Mary, all the mothers and fathers who had volunteered their babies to play Jesus withdrew them. So Miss Shapely eventually had to use a baby doll, and she didn’t even look too happy about handing over that. 

“My mom says Mrs. Murphy is a slut,” Hermione said to Hal, loud enough for the whole sanctuary to hear. 

Miss Shapely let Hermione get away with a lot, but even she couldn’t let Hermione call someone a slut right out loud in church without punishing her. So she told Hermione that the girl who played Mary couldn’t use that kind of language, and asked if everyone agreed Alice should have the part. Everyone shifted around and sat on their hands and mumbled yes, and after that, there was nothing to do but let Alice Smith play Mary. Hermione was so mad that Hal was afraid to even look at her. 

Now of course, there was a big fat hole in the casting, and that was Joseph. No one ever wanted to play Joseph, not even Oscar Andrews. He just got stuck doing it because he was handsome, and good at sitting still, and was the only boy who didn’t think girls had cooties. 

But now that Joseph had to sit near Alice Smith, no one was willing to touch that part with a ten foot pole. 

“Now we need a Joseph,” said Miss Shapely, looking nervous. All the boys in the room immediately looked down at their shoes. “Fred, are you sure you wouldn’t want to…?” 

Fred’s head whipped over to Hal, and Hal was pretty sure he knew what was coming. 

“Hal can play Joseph!” he announced. 

Of course, that was absurd. Even Hal’s mom had never cast him as Joseph, just kept sticking him in the angel choir because (in her words) he was so pretty and darling that he just fit right in. There was one year that he got to play the angel of the Lord, only when the spotlight hit him and he had to say his line, he was so nervous he peed his pants right onstage. Gertrude said you couldn’t tell, but Hermione called him potty pants for the rest of the year because of it. 

“Joseph can’t be BLONDE!” Hermione screeched. You could tell she thought the play was going to hell in a handbasket right in front of her. Hal thought she was right, of course. He’d never in his life seen a Joseph that didn’t have brown hair, not in the Children’s Bibles, not in the figurines that sat on mantelpieces, not even on the quilts that hung in the nursery room. 

But no one else was volunteering, and the place where he could feel Alice Smith’s eyes on his cheek was burning like someone was holding a match to it. 

Hal slumped his shoulders and made himself as small as possible, as though Miss Shapely would just look right through him if he scrunched up enough. “I can be Joseph,” he murmured. The part itself wasn’t actually too hard, but the thought of everyone looking at him made his stomach hurt. He looked at Alice and then looked away as quick as he possibly could. 

After that, there was only one big role left, and Miss Shapely said Hermione could be the angel who brings the good news to the shepherds. 

“That should be perfect for you,” said Penelope haughtily. Her face was as red as her hair, and Hal could tell she was equally mad about Alice playing Mary, but she wasn’t brave enough to say anything. “You have the biggest mouth.” 

Of course, that couldn’t be the end of it. Claudius suddenly got mad that there were no speaking parts left, and he was supposed to be on the brink of his big acting career, with Southside Serpents and Fred in all the good parts. You could tell Miss Shapely was at the end of her rope, because she said Claudius could be the head shepherd, only everyone knew that there was no head shepherd and she was just making that up out of thin air. Claudius wasn’t impressed either. 

“I want to be King Herod,” he announced. 

“King Herod isn’t in our play,” Miss Shapely said. 

“Well, he should be.” 

“Who’s King Herod!?” Tall Boy hollered. You could tell he didn’t like the idea of there being some extra king he hadn’t heard about, and wanted to make sure he hadn’t got the short end of the stick. 

“King Herod tried to have the Baby Jesus put to death,” Penelope explained primly. She couldn’t resist explaining things to people, even Tall Boy. 

Tall Boy’s mouth dropped open. “Jee-zus Christ. He tried to kill a baby? ” 

Hal thought his mother would have had a stroke if she’d heard Tall Boy take the Lord’s name in vain right out there in church, but at least he wasn’t cheering Herod on, which would have been Hal’s first guess as to how he’d take the news. 

“Not my baby!” Alice exploded. Her face flared red, and her hands clenched into fists. “If some king tried to kill my baby, I’d stomp him in the nuts!” 

All the boys in the room instinctively shielded their laps with their hands. Penelope gasped out loud. “You can’t say nuts in church,” she squeaked, her face turning bright red. Hermione looked very smugly satisfied, and Hal could bet she was going to bring all of this back to her mother just as soon as she got home. 

“No one’s going to hurt my baby,” Alice replied hotly. She turned back to Miss Shapely, concern written all over her face. “They didn’t hurt the baby, did they?” 

“N-No,” Miss Shapely answered, taken aback. “Herod sent the three kings to report the location of the Baby Jesus, but they went back by another route so they wouldn’t have to tell him.” 

“If Herod told me to do that, I’d really let him get it,” Tall Boy announced, cracking his knuckles. Claudius started sweating, and you could tell he was pretty glad there was no Herod in the play after all. “What did this guy look like? How strong was he? I bet I could take him.” 

“He sounds like my dad,” was FP’s deadpan contribution. He had found gum somewhere and was chomping it in his mouth while he was talking. Hal had a bad feeling it had come off the underside of one of the pews. 

Miss Shapely finally said Claudius could be the innkeeper, and Hal thought that would be the end of it. But right then, shepherds started quitting left and right. 

“My mom says I can’t be in the pageant this year,” said Marcus. 

“I have an allergy to the straw in the manger,” said Darryl Doiley. “I just developed it.” 

Miss Shapely had to tell everybody that they weren’t allowed to quit, and by then it was 5:30 and time to go home. When they were walking home, Hermione caught up to Hal and pinched his arm. 

“You should tell your mom about what’s happening with the play,” she said. Her nails were very sharp, and she smelled like strawberry-mango body spray. “I think she’d want to know.” 

Of course, what she meant was that Mrs. Cooper would be furious if she knew Southside kids were taking the main roles, and then Hermione would end up playing Mary. But even though he didn’t want to play Joseph, Hal didn’t want to tell his mom. He kept thinking about the way Alice had looked when she’d heard about Herod - fire flashing out of her eyes - and thinking that probably was the way the real Mary would have felt, rather than sitting quietly and fussing with her hair, like Hermione always did. And Fred was walking way ahead of them with FP, their arms linked, and Hal could hear him practicing his solo already. So Hal would be a pretty crummy friend if he went and blabbed to his mom. 

So he kept his mouth shut. 

Of course, Prudence Cooper found out anyway.

For two or three days it was all anyone in town could talk about: that the Southside kids were taking over the lead roles in the pageant, and whether or not they would ruin Christmas just by being in it. Mrs. Blossom wanted to pull Penelope and Claudius out of the pageant, and even Fred’s dad said they’d better lock up the church silverware during rehearsals. He told Fred that if FP or Tall Boy tried to rough him up, he should tell a policeman right away, because then they’d be locked up in Juvie long enough for Fred to graduate middle school. He even made Oscar teach him how to throw a punch, just in case. 

But no one was as upset as Prudence herself. Over the dinner table, she told Hal’s father that she had never trusted Miss Shapely to run the Christmas pageant. In fact, she said, she’d thought Miss Shapely should be fired for years. She said she felt personally responsible for the whole situation, because if she hadn’t resigned from the Christmas pageant this never would have happened. So the next day, she marched right down to Reverend Henry's office and told him it was sacrilegious to let a girl like Alice Smith play the mother of Jesus, and that she was willing to step back in and whip the pageant back into shape. 

But Reverend Henry didn’t take her up on it, even though he usually listened to everything Mrs. Cooper said. Instead, he told her the same thing he was telling everyone: that when Jesus said suffer the little children to come onto me, he meant all children, even ones from the Southside. 

And even Hal’s mother couldn’t argue with that.

Chapter Text

When rehearsals started for the Christmas pageant, Hal didn’t know what to expect. Everyone was scared to death of the Southside Serpents, but they were interested too. After all, they were the closest things Riverdale Middle School had to real criminals, and you had to wonder how they’d react to stuff like having to wear a pillowcase or sing What Child Is This? 

Darryl Doiley told everyone that it was only a matter of time before one of them torched the Sunday school room. Marcus held extra tight to his shepherd cane, as though assuming he’d need to use it for self defense. But no one was more attentive than Hermione. 

“Did you know Tall Boy drank real communion wine instead of grape juice on Sunday?” she asked Hal. She had a pink notebook and a glitter gel pen, and she was helping Penelope write down all of the Serpents’ transgressions, probably so she could show them to Miss Shapely and get the role of Mary back. “If you look at FP’s hands, the knuckles are all bloody. I bet you anything he got in another fight. And every time you go into the girls’ room,” Hermione continued, “Alice Smith is sitting there in the Mary costume, smoking cigarettes!” 

What became apparent the quickest was that they didn’t know anything about the Christmas story. Miss Shapely had to tell them the whole thing - about Mary, and Jesus, and the census, and the barn. Since Alice had never been to Sunday School before, she didn’t seem to know how Mary was supposed to be - quiet and thoughtful and loving, like a mom in a storybook. In rehearsals, she yelled at everyone who came near her baby, and when Claudius told Hal there was no room for them at the inn, she wheeled around to face Hal and snapped: “Are you going to let him talk to me like that?” 

She was furious too when Claudius suggested she put Jesus in the manger, although according to Hermione’s notebook she’d told Miss Shapely that once she’d put Mrs. Murphy’s baby in a House Depot bucket when she couldn’t find a high chair. Everyone was too afraid of her to stand anywhere near where they were supposed to, so all the angels and shepherds ended up crammed together on the far side of the stage. Fred and FP were so busy goofing around together that they never came in when they were supposed to, and Tall Boy was insistent that he needed a sword. 

“What kind of king doesn’t carry a weapon?” he wanted to know. He was so tall that the blue robe he was supposed to wear only came down to his waist, and you could see his ripped jeans and dirty shoes sticking out. “How is he supposed to fight in wars?” 

“In those times, kings wouldn’t have fought their own wars,” Miss Shapely told him quickly. “They would have soldiers fight for them.” 

You could tell she was proud of herself for thinking of that, but it didn’t matter because Tall Boy just barged ahead with another question. 

“How is he supposed to defend himself when he’s crossing the desert?” 

“Defend himself against what?” Miss Shapely asked. You could see her patience wearing thin. 

“Rival gangs,” Tall Boy answered very seriously. “And desert snakes. Poisonous ones.” 

“What’s Myrrh?” FP wanted to know next. He was throwing the heavy bath salt jar they used as a prop up and down like a baseball. Hal saw Penelope writing down in Hermione’s notebook either that FP didn’t know what Myrrh was, or that he was throwing it around for fun. 

“It’s a precious oil,” Miss Shapely answered. 

FP snorted. “Kind of a shitty gift,” he said under his breath, and Penelope gasped. But Miss Shapely had clearly decided to ignore all cuss words that didn’t start with F, since they’d never get anything done otherwise. 

“Myrrh was very valuable,” Miss Shapely tried to explain. “It was worth a lot.” 

“How much?” Tall Boy demanded. He and FP had a quick conference, and you could tell they were trying to figure out how much they could get for those bath salt jars, as if the second-grade milk money hadn’t been enough for FP after all. 

“Ten dollars,” Miss Shapely said, just to give them a number. “But these are just bath salt jars, so they aren’t worth anything.” 

Well, that was disappointing to FP and Tall Boy. But just as Hal predicted, they figured out that those bath salt jars made pretty good weapons, and tying bathrobe sashes to them and clonking each other in the shins throughout rehearsals seemed to cheer them both up. 

So, all in all, rehearsals could have gone better. Luckily, since he could have played the role of Joseph with his eyes closed, Hal mostly just got to stand around and sit by the manger while Miss Shapely begged Fred to stop sword-fighting FP with the shepherd canes. The scariest part for him was when Miss Shapely was working with the younger kids, and he had to stand alone with Alice. Whenever she talked to him he started sweating, and he always felt like he had to go to the bathroom when they made eye contact. 

But by the fourth week of rehearsals, the anxious feeling in his stomach was getting a little better. Which was good, because Alice chose that Sunday to drop a bomb on him. 

They were sitting in the wings just offstage, because everyone else was focused on coordinating the Wise Men’s entrance. Alice was drawing pictures in the dust on the piano lid with her finger, when out of the blue she turned to Hal and said: 

“You know I didn’t start that fire, right?” 

“What?” Hal asked, taken aback. Everyone had always assumed it was Alice behind the toolshed fire, even though they didn’t have any proof, just because she was the ringleader and the most dangerous. 

Alice kept on drawing patterns in the dust. “I didn’t,” she repeated. “But I can’t tell you who did it. It’s a secret.” She paused, chewing on her lower lip as though she was struggling with what to say. “I just wanted you to know.” 

“Why me?” Hal asked.

“I don’t know,” said Alice. Then she got up and ran onstage and left Hal sitting there on the piano bench, with the baby Jesus wrapped up in towels at his feet.

Chapter Text

On the night of their dress rehearsal, Miss Shapely tried to convince Tall Boy to take out his earring. It was gold and white and shaped like a fang, and he’d stolen it from the pawn shop by having FP distract the clerk while he swiped it. 

“I’m not supposed to,” he argued, “or the hole will close up.” 

“I don’t think it will close up in half an hour,” Miss Shapely tried to tell him. “What did the doctor say?” 

Tall Boy looked at her blankly. “The doctor?” 

“The doctor who pierced your ear.” 

Tall Boy laughed. “It wasn’t a doctor. ” He said it as though Miss Shapely had suggested his ear had been pierced by something ridiculous, like an elephant. 

“Well, where did you get it done?” Miss Shapely asked. “At the mall?” 

Tall Boy pointed wordlessly at Alice.

“Alice pierced your ear?” Miss Shapely asked faintly. 

Tall Boy nodded. “She used a needle and a potato, and it didn’t even hurt. Bled a lot though.” 

It seemed like Miss Shapely couldn’t decide if he was joking or not, so she just let it slide. But later Hal heard Fred begging Alice to pierce his ear, and he seemed pretty serious about that. 

“All right,” Miss Shapely said, clapping her hands so they all gathered around her, “The point of a dress rehearsal is to go straight through without stopping. So that’s what we’re going to do today, and then we’ll be ready for the real thing on Christmas Eve.” 

But of course they didn’t. Things started going wrong right from the very first hymn, when Hermione yanked one of Penelope’s pigtails for standing in front of her during "O Little Town of Bethlehem". FP dropped his myrrh on Darryl’s foot, and one of the little angels got whacked with a shepherd’s cane and their mom had to be called to take them home. Tall Boy pushed Fred into the manger when he was walking too slowly, which made FP so mad he clobbered Tall Boy immediately in the face. And they weren’t the only ones fighting. Alice kept picking a fight with Claudius whenever he turned them away from the inn, so Miss Shapely had to step in to keep him from getting hurt. 

“Now Claudius, you don’t actually have to tell them no,” she told him, trying to keep the peace. “Just shake your head firmly, and everyone in the congregation will see and understand. And Alice, you don’t have to argue with him. Just look sad, and turn away. Mary and Joseph and the innkeeper don’t actually have to say anything. They just make a pretty picture for us to look at while we think about Christmas and what it means.” 

Well, there wasn’t anything pretty about FP and his black eye and Tall Boy and his ratty jeans and the old doll they were using for the baby Jesus. But privately Hal thought Alice was very pretty, even if he was still too scared to make eye contact with her the whole time they were walking to Bethlehem. 

Hermione had started wearing eyeshadow and shimmery lip gloss to every rehearsal, probably in the hopes that someone would see her and say, who’s that beautiful girl playing the angel of the Lord? Why isn’t she playing Mary? But Hal thought that could backfire on her pretty quickly, because Hal’s mom had always been adamant that no one in the pageant was allowed to wear makeup. One year Hal’s dad had to hold her back from running on stage in the middle of the show because one of the girls in the angel choir was wearing coral lipstick. 

Then on top of all the chaos with the Serpents, the typical mistakes kept cropping up, like the angels singing the wrong song, or the shepherds coming in the wrong door at the wrong time. And everyone was so busy waiting to see who Alice would clobber next, that they missed all their cues. 

Finally, Miss Shapely said they could take a five-minute break. “And then we’ll come right back, and we’ll do the whole thing without stopping,” she said hopelessly, her expression looking like she already knew it was a lost cause. And sure enough, it never happened. 

Alice spent the whole break smoking in the ladies’ room, and when Prudence, who was there setting up dinner with the pot-luck committee, opened the door and saw the smoke, she ran right to the front office and called the fire department. 

So they were all on stage singing “Away In A Manger” when the fire truck pulled up, the siren screaming and the red lights flashing through the stained glass windows and off the walls. Everyone had to hurry outside and do a headcount, and the firefighters made them all stand in one place until they’d thoroughly searched the church for fire, even though it was freezing cold. 

“Why in the world did you call the fire department?” Bunny Andrews asked Mrs. Cooper later. “Couldn’t you tell it was cigarette smoke?” 

“Well, I certainly didn’t expect there to be cigarette smoke in the ladies' room at a church! ” Hal heard his mother retort. “And we all know what those kids did to that toolshed.” 

But one big thing did come of it, because during the time everyone was standing around outside waiting for the firefighters to give the all clear, Alice came and sat next to Hal. They were sitting on the steps of the temporary classroom where the youth group was held, and from there you could see where the toolshed used to be, which was now just a big black patch in the grass. 

Alice was looking and looking at it, still wearing the blue pillowcase from the dress rehearsal, and Hal suddenly felt a sort of crazy courage come over him. 

“Who really started the fire, Alice?” Hal asked. He felt as though if he didn’t ask her right that second, he never would, and then he’d never know for the rest of his life. 

Alice picked at a scab on her elbow, and then looked Hal right in the face. Everyone was standing around the church watching for smoke, so no one was paying attention to them even though they were barely out of earshot. Her face was scowly and tough. “Cross your heart, hope to die you won’t tell anyone?” she asked, in a voice that made it pretty clear she’d uphold the die part of the bargain. 

“Yeah,” Hal said seriously. 

“Stick a needle in your eye, promise?” 

“Yeah,” said Hal, but nervously now, because he was pretty sure Alice could get her hands on a needle if she felt like it. Actually he knew she could, because of the ear piercing. “I guess-” 

“FP did.” Her dark blue eyes were burning into him, solemn in their honesty. “But it was an accident. I just said I did it because his dad hits him if he gets in trouble.” 

Hal didn’t know what to say. He opened and closed his mouth, but no words came out, and he just sat there quietly instead, looking at Alice’s blue eyes. 

“He didn’t take the milk money either,” Alice said, chewing on a lock of her hair. “But everyone thought he did, and when his dad found out he beat him up so bad he had to stay in bed for two weeks. That’s why he couldn’t go back to school for so long.” 

She suddenly looked very solemn, so much that Hal knew right away she wasn’t lying or making it up. He was trying to think of something to say when Alice beat him to it. 

“And if you tell anyone,” she said. “Even your mom or dad, I’ll punch your teeth out of your mouth and stuff them down your throat.” 

So at least she was the same old Alice.

Chapter Text

Hal’s dad never wanted to come see the Christmas pageant on Christmas Eve, and this year was no different. In fact, Lewis was especially stubborn because of the casting. 

“I don’t need to see a bunch of juvenile delinquents make a mockery of Christianity,” he said as Prudence tried to get him out of his recliner. “I get enough of that on the nightly news.” 

But eventually Prudence said he had to go see Hal play Joseph, and that was that. Actually, Lewis seemed pretty impressed that his son was playing Joseph, instead of wearing a bedsheet in the angel choir like every other year. 

“Did something happen to Fred Andrews?” he kept asking as Prudence made him put his boots on. “Does he have mono again?” 

Hal’s mom had to make sure the whole family got there on time, even though she didn’t seem too optimistic about the pageant herself. But everyone in town was going to be there, because no one was willing to risk missing what they were pretty sure was going to be a disaster, and Prudence had to attend so she could tell people exactly what she thought of it later. And even though she acted reluctant, Hal and Gertrude privately believed wild horses wouldn’t have kept her away. 

“It’s like a car crash,” Gertrude said to Hal. “You know it’s going to be bad, but you can’t look away from it.” 

Like they did every year, the Coopers drove to church slowly, taking the long roads so they could see all the Christmas lights in the neighbourhood. All the way there, Gertrude kept making bets on what would go wrong. 

“Fifty cents says someone gets a nosebleed,” she said. “A dollar one of them lights something on fire.” 

But that was as far as she got, because Mrs. Cooper said gambling wasn’t ladylike and told her to cut it out. 

When they got to the church, Hal had to hurry to the Sunday School room to get into his bathrobe, and there was all the usual last-minute ruckus as everyone tried to get ready on time. Because of Prudence’s broken wrist, she hadn’t been able to help the decorating committee set up the sanctuary, but she had overseen the whole thing and bossed the people who were decorating around, so it ended up looking splendid. The Advent candles were all lit, and there were heaps of candles and poinsettias all around the church, and best of all was the big Christmas tree set up right behind the stage that went almost all the way up to the peaked ceiling. All the dads in the congregation had got together one Saturday to haul it in and string up the lights, and they’d even had to use Artie Andrews’ cherry picker to get the star right on top. It looked like something right out of a Christmas card, and Hal could hardly believe it was real. 

While all the Sunday School kids clustered around the stage, the ushers dimmed the lights and handed out candles that would be lit during Silent Night, and Miss Shapely sat down at the piano and started playing “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” When Prudence was running the show, Miss Shapley always told them to break a leg right beforehand, but she didn’t say it this year, probably because she knew the Southside kids would see it as an invitation. 

The angel choir stood on stage and sang while Hal and Alice and the wise men stood in the wings. FP and Fred and Tall Boy kept stepping on each other's robes and whispering, and Penelope kept turning around onstage to glare at them over the noise they were making. Alice was shaking with nerves next to Hal, and she had the doll cradled in her arms, wrapped in one of the tea towels from the church kitchen. 

“Don’t bug me,” she hissed at him, even though Hal hadn’t said or done anything. “I don’t want to miss my cue.” 

But when they walked in, Alice in her blue dress and Hal in the old striped bathrobe they always used for Joseph (he was pretty sure it still had some of Oscar’s Kleenex wadded up in the pockets) she stopped so abruptly that Hal almost ran into her. Maybe it was because of the tree, and the candles, and how different the sanctuary looked with only half the lights up, and the snow drifting gently outside past the windows. Or maybe she just got stage fright. But she froze up so completely that Hal thought for a second she was going to turn around and run right out of the church, with the baby Jesus still in her arms and everything. 

Hal was wondering what the heck Miss Shapely was going to do if Mary ran off with the baby Jesus, when Alice started walking again, and he followed her. They crossed the stage and were turned away by Claudius, and Hal held his breath, sure that this was the time Alice would slug him, and that would be that. But instead Alice did something unexpected. She reached down and squeezed Hal’s fingers with the hand that wasn’t holding the baby Jesus, and he was so surprised and distracted that he forgot what they were doing and almost tripped over the manger. But fortunately no one saw, because the shepherds chose that moment to come in, and they were banging their canes around so much that you couldn’t hear anything else. 

They all sang “While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks By Night” as loud as they could, to cover up the banging, and then Hermione made her entrance, pushing baby angels out of the way. Hermione had one line in the whole pageant, and she made the most of it, standing up on a piano bench in the spotlight and bellowing at the shepherds that Jesus was born. All the shepherds trembled with fear, just like they were supposed to - fear of Hermione, mostly, but it worked. (Hal could almost feel his mom looking at her glittery eyeshadow with disapproval.)

Then they sang “Hark The Herald Angels Sing”, and “Angels We Have Heard On High”, and Alice, who seemed to have gotten over her stage fright, started jiggling the baby Jesus up and down like he was a real baby. She whispered to the doll and kissed its head, and then she put Jesus up on her shoulder and thumped him on the back like she was burping him. 

Penelope poked Hal from where she was standing with the angel chorus. “I don’t think it’s very nice to burp the Baby Jesus,” she hissed, her face turning red, but Hal ignored her. 

Then Miss Shapely started playing “We Three Kings of Orient Are,” and everyone turned towards the doors to watch the wise men come in. Fred came in first, all regal in his red and gold costume, a big megawatt smile on his face and one of the plastic gold Burger Queen crowns perched on his head. Then Tall Boy and FP followed him, only both of them stopped and froze when they came in the door, looking like they’d just been clocked in the face. FP ran into Tall Boy’s shoulder and almost tripped over his robe. 

It was the same reaction Alice had had, and Hal didn’t understand. Then he saw Tall Boy’s head tilt up and knew he was stuck there staring at the Christmas tree. But FP, behind him, had his shoulders pulled in, and he was looking all around the sanctuary in the firelight, looking scared like he didn’t know where he was or what he was doing. And all of a sudden Hal felt sorry for him, which was something he’d never thought he’d feel for someone who had taken the cookies out of his lunch every day since September. 

But from up on the stage, FP didn’t look big and bad at all anymore - just like a scared little kid who’d never seen so many candles in one place, or ever been to church on Christmas Eve. And he’d even scrubbed some of the dirt off his face, so he was all pale and childlike under the hood of his green robe. 

Fred kept marching onward, carrying the whole show. 

“We three Kings of Orient Are,” he sang in a booming voice. “Bearing gifts we traverse afar, field and fountain, moor and mountain, following yonder star.” 

Well, they had a spotlight up above the stage to be the star, but no one was following it for a second. Everyone had turned around to see Tall Boy and FP still standing in the doorway, holding their breath, wondering what they would possibly mess up or if someone would pull a lighter out. No one wanted to miss a minute of the chaos if something went wrong. 

But nothing did. FP gave Tall Boy a little shove, and he started walking while Fred launched into his solo, giving it everything he’d got. Then Tall Boy sang his part in a deep voice that charged like an army. And then FP sang his verse, remarkably quietly, sweeter than he’d ever done in rehearsals, and everyone in the church went oddly quiet to listen, so that you could have heard a pin drop on the tile floor: 

“Myrrh is mine, it’s bitter perfume

Breathes a life of gathering gloom, 

Sorrowing, sighing, weeping, dying

Sealed in the stone cold tomb.” 

His pale little face under his shock of black hair was so solemn and sad in the candlelight that goosebumps exploded up and down Hal’s arms and back. But then he ran up the stage steps towards Fred with a big smile on his face, holding the old grimy bath salt jar in one hand like a football, and it was like all of a sudden he was a completely different person, one Hal had never met before. 

The wise men were supposed to leave by a different door, to show they weren’t going back to King Herod, but Tall Boy just plopped down and sat right next to the manger with his dirty shoes sticking out of his robe. After a minute, Fred and FP sat down too. Hal saw Hermione shooting them dirty looks, but Fred was whispering something in FP’s ear and didn’t notice. Whatever it was, FP grinned, and Hal was struck by the fact that this was maybe the second-or-third-ever smile he had seen out of him in all his life. 

The audience was smiling too. Hal looked out at Gertrude and his mother and father, sitting next to Oscar and Mr. and Mrs. Andrews, and all of them had smiles on their faces, even his mom. Later everyone would say it was the best pageant yet, though they didn’t seem to understand why. Something was different this year, something they couldn’t put their fingers on. 

Finally, it was time for Silent Night, and the minister went up to the front of the church to light his candle with the Christ candle. Then he walked over to Hal’s dad and lit his candle, and he lit Hal’s mom’s candle, and so on and so forth until all the candles in the audience were lit. 

You could tell none of the Southside kids had ever seen anything like it before, and they were all watching it intensely - interested in the fire, Hal assumed, but maybe he was wrong. You could see the snow falling down past the black windows, and the candlelight flickering off the glass. The ushers turned off the house lights entirely, and then the sanctuary was only lit by the glow of candles, and everyone’s faces were gold and beautiful, and everything felt cozy and safe and warm. They sang all the verses, and when they got to the last chorus Hal looked over at Alice and almost dropped his hymn book right into the manger. 

Alice Smith was crying. 

There were tears all over her face, and she wasn’t even bothering to wipe them off, just letting them run sluggishly down her cheeks and chin and nose, which were shiny-bright in the glow from the candles. A couple tears even splatted right on the baby Jesus’ head. And they just kept coming, hard and quick and silent, like rain running down a roof. She just sat there, awful Alice Smith with her bony elbows and scraggly hair, holding the baby doll in her arms and crying and crying and crying. 

Hal wanted to say something to comfort her, only it seemed like the kind of crying you just had to do on your own. So he put his arm around her shoulders, carefully, and she leaned against him all at once, and this warm feeling raced all up his arm and the side of his body where he was touching her. 

Well. It really was the best Christmas pageant they’d ever had. 

Later in the sanctuary, when everyone was saying goodbye, and Hal’s dad was bragging about how good his son had been at playing Joseph, Reverend Henry came and shook hands with all the Southside kids. He said they did a great job in the pageant, and it was an honour to have them. He didn’t even mention the toolshed, which kind of gave you the idea it was all water under the bridge. Alice’s eyes were still all red, and her face was puffy, but Tall Boy and FP were scarfing down Christmas cookies at the refreshment table with both hands, and you could tell those two were having a great old time. 

Well, that made Penelope huff - the idea that the Southside Serpents did a great job - but Hal thought privately they had improved the pageant quite a bit. When he really thought about it, all you ever heard about the Christmas Story was how all the cattle were lowing and the baby was wrapped in swaddling clothes or whatever, but it didn’t change the fact that the baby Jesus was born in a barn, which really wasn’t even as good as a trailer park. 

He and his parents probably were dirty and penniless and grumpy, just like the Southside kids, even if it wasn’t nice to read about. And precious oils were a shitty gift for a baby who needed food and diapers and love. And the real Mary probably was a lot like Alice Smith - scared and messy-haired, but ready to stomp the nuts of anyone who sent people to hurt her child. 

Hal’s dad helped Reverend Henry snuff out all the candles, and Prudence bossed around the ladies on the clean-up committee, and Penelope Blossom helped Miss Shapely hang up the costumes and fold up the manger. None of the Southside kids had parents who had come to see them, so at some point they just slipped out the back door, with FP and Tall Boy’s pockets bulging with cookies. But Alice gave Miss Shapely the baby doll back before she left, and she was still holding it as carefully as if it were real. 

When Hal’s family finally came out of the church, the sky was inky-black and crystal clear, and the snow crunched like icicles under their boots. Across the street, all the houses had their Christmas lights up, and they glowed like warm starlight in the dark. You could hear carolers singing far away, and their voices were ghostly and beautiful out in the snow. And Hal had this funny feeling he would remember it all for years to come, even if he had to sit through a million more Christmas pageants before he died. 

Well next year he was back in the angel choir, and Fred got stuck being Joseph again, and Hal’s mom made Hermione wash off all her makeup before she could play Mary, because Mary was supposed to be “fresh-faced and maidenly.” 

And for the rest of his life, whenever Hal looked back on his childhood, and Christmases spent at church, it would be Fred Andrews he remembered in that striped bathrobe, and all his mother’s wrath about candy-cane numbers set to Jingle Bell Rock, and the unfortunate time he’d peed his pants as the angel of the Lord. 

But for the rest of his life, Mary to him would always be Alice - even when they had kids of their own, singing off-key with the angels and waving to them from under hooded bathrobes in the shepherd chorus. Alice with her bruised elbows and bony knees, overwhelmed and bewildered, crying when the spirit of Christmas hit her, a lonely stranger in a strange place who was still ready to clobber the first person who looked at her baby wrong. 

And that, Hal always thought, was what the Christmas story was all about.