Caribbean children's fiction - A child's view of Christmas

For Daniel

I love Christmas. Presents!  I love Christmas. Presents! That’s mostly what I can think of. This last week of school is not nice. The days just seem so long, while I wait for Christmas. Presents!

Mrs. Chin says we have to practise for the Christmas concert.  Every December we have to practise songs and plays and stuff to amuse our parents. My class is doing the Nativity scene. Someone gets a dolly and puts it in a cradle, and there’s a Mary and Joseph and wisemen and shepherds and angels.

I want to be Joseph, but Mrs. Chin says I have to be an angel. The angels have to sing a whole lot of songs. I am not going to remember them.  I want to be Joseph to help Mary open the presents the wisemen bring for baby Jesus. We‘re not supposed to open  them but last year the girl who was Mary said she didn’t know what Franky sense and Myrth were, but she thought the gold would be a chain or a bangle she could wear.  I think she forgot that Jesus was a boy. Mrs. Chin warned this year’s Mary not to touch the presents, but since she didn’t warn Joseph, If I was Joseph, I would open them.

Anyway, only the bright sparks Melvin and Joanna know  the words of the songs we angels have to sing, so this morning I asked Mrs. Chin If I could be the angel Hark. 

“There’s no such angel.” she barks at me.She doesn't have much patience at this time of year.

“Oh yes,” I tell her.  “He’s the angel who sings, you know ‘Hark, the herald angel sings’” Jeez, you would think  Mrs Chin would know that. If I am Hark I only have to sing ‘Glory to the newborn king’.

Mrs. Chin looks at me with that look grownups have when they are trying not to laugh, then she runs out of the room.Maybe she needs to use the bathroom. Soon we hear laughter coming from the staffroom. Somebody is giving jokes. I guess they are happy. It’s Christmas. Presents!

 I wish Mrs Chin would hurry up and come back. I am ready to be Hark and sing my one line: ‘Glory to the new born king .’ over and over. I can do that real good.

Please vote for my chapter book A Goatboy Never Cries at http://www.bookindustryja.com/vote_children_chapter_book_nominee