...is The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson.
I read this as a child and re-discovered it this season through my kid. She opened it up, began reading, and began laughing to herself. "This," she said, "is really funny."
One day I saw Alice Wendleken writing something down on a little pad of paper, and trying to hide it with her other hand...What she wrote was 'Gladys Herdman drinks communion wine.'
'It isn't wine,' I said. 'It's grape juice.'
'I don't care what it is, she drinks it. I've seen her three times with her mouth all purple. They steal crayons from the Sunday-school cupboards, too, and if you shake the Happy Birthday bank in the kindergarten room it doesn't make a sound. They stole all the pennies out of that....and every time you go in the girls' room,' she went on, 'the whole air is blue, and Imogene Herdman is sitting there in the Mary costume, smoking cigars!'
...
Since none of the Herdmas had ever gone to church or Sunday school or read the Bible or anything, they didn't know how things were supposed to be. Imogene, for instance, didn't know that Mary was supposed to be acted out in one certain way---sort of quiet and dreamy and out of this world.
The way Imogene did it, Mary was a lot like Mrs. Santoro at the Pizza Parlor...[who] yells and hollers and hugs her kids and slaps them around. That's how Imogene's Mary was---loud and bossy.
'Get away from the baby!' she yelled at Ralph, who was Joseph. And she made the Wise Men keep their distance.
'The Wise Men want to honor the Christ Child,' Mother explained, for the tenth time. 'They don't mean to harm him, for heaven's sake!'
But the Wise Men didn't know how things were supposed to be either, and nobody blamed Imogene for shoving them out of the way. You got the feeling that these Wise Men were going to hustle back to Herod as fast as they could and squeal on the baby, out of pure meanness.
They thought about it too. 'What if we didn't go home another way?' Leroy demanded.
Merry Christmas!
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