Bizarre Christmas Nostalgia

I don't really like Christmas but you can't escape it at the moment. Idly flicking around radio stations this morning I came across a station that was playing Chris de Burgh's festive offering of many years past "A Spaceman Came Travelling". I assure you that it is as nauseating as any of the other songs in the de Burgh canon and I really cannot stand such music, but I can't get around the fact that it played a fundamental part in my formative years.

I must have been about six years old when a teacher at my primary school, evidently years ahead of her time, decided to base our nativity play around the song. The basic narrative concerned the appearance of a bright light in the vicinity of Bethlehem that was not in fact a star but a spaceship. Issuing forth from said spaceship came - you've guessed it - a spaceman, who went on to locate the heavenly babe in a stable and make an impassioned plea for peace on earth. A recording of the de Burgh music was interspersed with traditional carols and readings.

The performance was traditional in many respects. We had a Mary and a Joseph, complete with scary plastic baby Jesus and throngs of blonde angels looking suitably angelic with tinsel on their heads (being boringly brunette and with a fetching pudding basin haircut I was passed over for angelic duties - I was the narrator). The demands of the story, however, meant that we also had a silver fibreglass spaceship whose design was heavily influenced by the recent smash hit movie E.T. We also had a tall, very blonde boy called Sean dressed in silver lurex, playing a traveller from outer space. The crowning glory of the whole production, though, was a table situated to the left of the stage around which sat several children playing the parts of world leaders of the time. This means that some poor girl had to play Margaret Thatcher, but I can't remember who it was. I do recall that a boy called Stuart got to play Helmut Kohl by virtue of his being born in Germany as his dad was in the army. At a crucial point in the plot all of these world leaders had to erupt into an argument, shouting "No" in various languages. I believe they were saying "No" to nuclear disarmament, these being the days of American missile bases in the U.K., Greenham Common, fear of nuclear attack from the U.S.S.R. and so on. Through drama, our teacher was attempting to get a group of five and six year olds to show just how far we were from peace at that point in time and how ineffectually daft the leading politicians were.

I can't help but wonder what our parents made of it all. I grew up in a fairly deprived area where political awareness was not high. To some, I suspect, the play was controversial. To most it was probably unfathomable. Looking back now, of course, it seems comical almost in the extreme, but you've got to wonder if there are teachers out there today who would put so much effort into taking such a risk with one of the primary school's most long-held traditions - the nativity. In the days of school league tables, relentless testing and rampant political correctness I somehow doubt it. As a small child I got to do something pretty cool. I appeared in an off-the-wall political statement of a nativity the like of which will probably never be seen again. It probably explains why I studied Politics at university all those years later.