12/21/2024
It's cold a block from the harbor and only days before Christmas. Parents, their children, young people, and a few old timers gather quietly in the dark on Stone Barn Lane in Rockport, Massachusetts.They are dressed as shepherds and ladies of Bethlehem with their children, Roman soldiers, and Mary and Joseph. Many have done this for years, a few for a lifetime, and some for generations. Mary's identity has been kept a secret until this moment. Lit only by a few torches they pass through the darkened village to the Christmas tree in Dock square. When the bells high in the steeple of Old Sloop Church toll five, they begin walking up Main Street. The sidewalks are lined with hundreds of people watching as the Holy Family arrives at the Art Association's granite steps. For this one night a year the 18th century building, once an inn, returns again to being an inn. The innkeeper turns Mary and Joseph away with a shake of his head; the inn is full. His daughter knows a place where they can rest. She leads them to the simple creche waiting beneath a glowing star on the lawn of the church. The narrator tells the story of their journey. The shepherds with their long staffs arrive and kneel in the straw before the manger. The elegant wise men appear and offer their gifts. Then the entire town stands in the darkness and sings Silent Night together. The pageant's actors quietly disappear into the night. The two thousand year old story is told again in twenty minutes. This has happened every Christmas for seventy nine years.
The first of those years was 1945. That year started with the Battle of the Bulge, and it saw Hi**er defeated. That year saw the desperate fight for Iwo Jima and the atomic destruction of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. That August the Japanese surrendered aboard the US Missouri. Over 400,000 Americans had been killed and Europe was in ruins. Project Magic Carpet brought two million of "our boys" home for Christmas using every available ship and train.There was joy, but it was tempered by the grief for so many who didn't return. That year " Let it Snow, Let it Snow", written by Sammy Cahn and Jule Stein and sung by Vaughn Monroe was a hit on the radio. 1945 has been called America's greatest Christmas. This is the Christmas Frank Capra made "It's a Wonderful Life" about. That was released a year later. For the first time in four years President Harry Truman lit the national Christmas tree on the lawn of the White House.
Winifred Jackman Hibbard (1898-1986) started the pageant against this backdrop. She was an artist and the wife of Aldro T. Hibbard, founder of Rockport's art colony. The Hibbards routinely organized parties and events. Jackie, as her friends called her, was from West Texas, north of El Paso on the New Mexico border. A centuries old Mexican tradition was still observed there, a celebration called La Posada. Posada means "inn" in Spanish. On the evenings before Christmas a couple costumed as Mary and Joseph would knock on doors and be turned away until they arrived at an "inn" that would allow them shelter. That year Jackie started an event that was based on that tradition. Over the first few years it evolved into the pageant we have today, with a creche set up in the little brick courtyard below the Art Association. The event was an immediate success with thousands of spectators. Two years later the creche had to be moved to the lawn of the Congregational Church so more people could see it. The pageant was originally presented only by members of the Art Association. The rosters of the early pageants include the well known artists who made Rockport famous as an art colony, later it became open to the participation of all townspeople. The Rockport Art Association has presented the pageant as a gift to the town of Rockport every year since the end of World War II.
It is our pageant now. Volunteer local contractors assemble the creche, volunteer electricians wire the lights and the beckoning star above it all. Volunteers dress the shepherds and the Kings, little miniature horses are ready to march, and the dozens of tiny lighted trees atop their poles line Main Street showing the way. We hope you will enjoy this years pageant and join us at its' end as we sing Silent Night.
