The Best Christmas Pageant Ever - Book Summary

Meet the Herdmans: “Six skinny, stringy-haired kids all alike except for being different sizes and having different black-and-blue places where they had clonked each other,” is how the narrator describes them. The oldest is Ralph, then Imogene, Leroy, Claude, Ollie, and the meanest Herdman of them all, the youngest, Gladys. The Herdmans are the stars of Barbara Robinson’s book, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, which begins, “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.”

This band of misfits turn a small town church and its annual Christmas pageant upside down when they are cast in the leading roles. The pageant has become commonplace and static, but the Herdman kids, who have never walked into a church, hear the Christmas story for the first time and offer their own interpretation, which the town will never forget.

As the story opens, the Herdmans have set fire to an old toolhouse with a chemistry set they stole from the hardware store. The firefighters arrive, along with doughnuts, but the Herdman’s take all the doughnuts for themselves, stuffing them in their shirts and pockets: the lesson they learned was that “wherever there’s a fire there will be free doughnuts sooner or later.”

The Herdmans live above a garage and have a front yard of rocks and poison ivy.  Their cat is so mean the mailman is convinced it’s a bobcat. Their father left when the youngest, Gladys was two, and their mother is hardly home, so the Herdmans raise themselves. They spend their time trying to smash each other underneath the garage door. One day, Claude Herdman brings that cat to first grade and it wreaks havoc, attacking the children, slurping up the goldfish, and eating another student’s pet mice. Imogene spends her time at school terrorizing the other kids by finding out their weights, and then blackmailing the heaviest ones until they give her what she wants.

The setting of the story is a small town during the holiday season. Mrs. Armstrong, a true church lady whose duties include running the Christmas pageant, breaks her leg and is in the hospital. The narrator, an unnamed school-aged girl, explains that her mother gets stuck with the job of running the Christmas pageant. Ultimately, the narrator tells us, it was her brother Charlie who was to blame for the Herdman’s getting involved in the pageant. Charlie is tired of Leroy Herdman stealing his dessert from his lunch at school and tells him, it doesn’t matter because he gets all the dessert he wants at Sunday School. Sure enough, all six Herdman’s show up at church the next Sunday, looking for snacks. When they hear about the Christmas pageant, they are all the more interested.

At the first pageant meeting, the narrator’s mother assigns the main roles, but no one volunteers except for the Herdmans. Imogene and Ralph would be Mary and Joseph; Leroy, Claude and Ollie would be the wisemen; and the youngest Herdman, Gladys, would be the Angel of the Lord. But the Herdmans haven’t ever heard the Christmas story. Now, hearing it for the first time, they are both incredulous and outraged.

For example, they can’t believe there was no room for Mary and Joseph in the inn, for instance, and that Child Welfare wasn’t there to to check on the baby; when they hear of the swaddling clothes in the manger, they imagined the baby Jesus “tied up” and “put in a feedbox.” They think the wise men’s gifts of frankincense and myrrh are ridiculous. And when they learn that King Herod who wanted to have baby Jesus killed,  they are mad that he won’t be in the Christmas pageant because they wanted a chance to beat him up.

Much of the church community wishes the Herdmans will be kicked out of the pageant, including Alice Wendeken, the narrator’s best friend, who has played Mary in the past. Alice, prim and proper, writes down all the horrible things the Herdmans say in her notebook. She tells the narrator that if she were Mary, they could have a live baby play baby Jesus, but no one wants to offer up their baby given that Imogene has the part. Actually, Imogene is very protective in her role as Mary: she smacks anybody who comes close to the baby Jesus.

On the night of the dress rehearsal, several ladies are at the church are preparing for a potluck supper. The rehearsal is chaotic anyway, but one of the church ladies sees smoke in the bathroom–most likely from the Herdmans smoking cigars– and calls the fire department.


Read our full book summary guide at https://www.gradesaver.com/the-best-c...