Years later, I would become a teenage drama queen and would be annoyed doing the play. My cousin Darryl would also feel the same as me, but even though we were “over it” after a while, that familiar feeling settled.
“Even when I didn’t want to do it, [I did]. [It] was a part of me,” said my cousin Darryl.
“But as I got into it, that same feeling came over me: ‘I was like this is family. I’m about to show out. We about to have a lot of fun, he added.’”
Over time, the levels of production had changed. There weren’t any props. We would just read the script, but we’d still have music throughout. Then altogether, we stopped performing the play just before my grandmother’s death in September 2005.
My mom never gave a reason. We just stopped doing the play. I’d always assumed it was tied to my grandmother’s death, but as it turns out, it wasn’t as complex as I’d thought.
My mom said she felt the holiday’s focus shifted to gifts instead of what she felt was the true meaning of Christmas: connecting as a family and teaching young people about Jesus. My mom also grew frustrated with some people in my family who’d complain each year about the play and didn’t want to participate. Over time those attitudes chipped away at my mother’s enthusiasm for the play.
“It became a downer for me, and I didn’t want to feel that way about Christmas,” she said.
I wish that we’d kept the tradition going, and I wish that my much younger cousins carried those memories as I do. However, what my mother set out to do, to bridge the gap between each generation, is something we still cherish and, in our way, still do.
I’ve seen that as recently as this year when my family gathered safely for a mini-family reunion mere days after Thanksgiving. This reunion included the children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren from four of grandmother’s six siblings.
The family reunion kicked off with a Friday night fish fry at my cousin Tammy’s home. One by one, members of my family arrived. I was excited to see and meet cousins I’d never met before that weekend.
After everyone settled in my cousin’s basement, I remember looking at a group of my little cousins that were all under twelve years old. They were quiet and bored, and that reminded me of what it was like sometimes to be in a room full of my elders back in the day.
My mom told me not to worry and said an icebreaker would get the whole room engaged. Moments later, she whipped out copies of a bingo board along with pencils. Each square contained a fact about each person in the room. Our job was to find the family member that matched and initial the square.
Before my mom could say start, the room began to buzz, and everyone in the room was moving around, hoping to say “BINGO” first. So I decided to help my little cousins that weren’t old enough to read and write. For example, one square asked people to find someone in the room born in Mississippi, which fit a couple of people in the room. Another bingo card told people to find my grandmother’s last female granddaughter (my sister Joi).
Some of my baby cousins were eager to talk to people in the room, and some needed a little encouragement to speak to elders in the room. Before I knew it, the game was over, and three winners took home $25 gift cards. That icebreaker was reminiscent of the Christmas play. It brought the whole room together and deepened our bond throughout the weekend. That weekend was beautiful and much needed after not seeing many of my extended family members since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.