The Greatest Gift Ever

by Chaz
(Enola, PA)

This program makes use of a clever stage misdirection to add a bit of wonder to the production. It's been very successful at Chaz's Church. Let us know how it goes at yours. Leave us a comment.

I hope you'll all understand what I'm trying to share!

PROP INFO:
We had a church member use furring strips to build a simple, but large "cube" to be the gift.

- Be sure the size of your cube can fit through the doorway! Ours was 7 foot in each direction.

- It helps to cover five sides of the cube with some type of plastic to give it some stability.

- Then cover those gift sides with some type of Christmas wrapping paper or a solid shiny paper.

- Separately use additional furring strips to make a square the size of the "gift". Cover this with the plastic and wrapping paper as well.

- Attach this "square" to one side of the cube with some hinges or strong cloth, so that the "square" acts like a door. We used a simple latch to keep the "door" closed.

- If desired, create a HUGE bow to set on top of the gift. Again, be sure it will fit in the door if you're making a huge gift.

PROGRAM IDEA:
At the beginning of the program, we had a few of our older children carry in a variety of large wrapped gifts from the back of the sanctuary to the altar area. One of the kids then yelled from the back of the sanctuary that they found a large gift and needed help to carry it.

Several of our youth then left the sanctuary and brought in the huge gift. It was so large that it didn't fit down the aisle and needed to be carried above the heads of the congregation.

They took the "gift" to the altar area and set it right up against a side doorway, which led to our choir room. They placed it so that the "door" of the gift was toward the congregation and the back of the gift against the door.

As soon as the "gift" was in place, a teacher opened the door behind the gift and used a box cutter to quickly cut thru the wrapping paper and plastic, which opened the back of the box.

One of the older children from earlier commented they wondered what was inside the box. The teacher stepped into the box from the backside (unseen by the congregation), slowly opened the door a bit and held out a child's book of the Christmas Story and waved it around to catch everyone's attention.

Those older children then took the book to one side of the altar area and began to read the Christmas story. As they did so, the various classes stepped "out of the box", by coming thru the choir room, and walking thru the box and out the front end in the sanctuary. (We made sure the hinged side was closer to the congregation, so they couldn't look inside the gift as it was opened.)

First out was Mary and Joseph with baby Jesus, then the shepherds, then the angels, etc.

This definitely got the attention of the congregation and was a new way of presenting the familiar story.

The best part of the whole thing was hearing people comment that they "couldn't believe we carried all of those kids up front in that box"! LOL.