Continuing on my theme of Christmas, I had a chance to go and see the Harlan Elementary Christmas program last night. Now I’m not one to arbitrarily attend random school Christmas programs, so as you might guess, both Dafyd and Jace were appearing in tonight’s performance and I wasn’t about to miss it.

The evening started out with a brief introduction and some nice words about the Christmas season and they even mentioned God. (That’s always been one of the things I’ve always appreciated about Harlan; their willingness to take into account the faith of the community in which they are apart.) The 5th and 6th grade choir and bell choir began the night off. Now it should be noted that Harlan Elementary is the only school in East Allen county to have a bell choir (how’s that for important trivia?).

I spent most of the time watching the boys and how they were reacting and interacting with their classmates.

Jace was very focused. He had given Dafyd, Michelle and I his entire concert on the ride over to the school so he was ready, but I can tell that he is very shy around his classmates. Dafyd on the other hand was the exact opposite. He was busy directing the choir, singing along with all the songs, and having a great time.

The performance of the choir was pretty good. Mr. Blouser (sp?), though I felt that the should have pursued something more challenging. After a few songs the bell choir broke out and did it’s thing.

Some of the bells were flat and the tune was lost on several performances. They attempted to redeem themselves by doing a joint with the vocal choir of Carol of the Bells. This was possibly doomed from the beginning as they were slightly out of sync. They picked up the slack in the middle of the song and ended what seemed strong. The crowd broke into applause, but the choir was pulling the old delay ending and finished the last note after a long pause. Personally I feel that such antics were sophomoric and out of place in an Elementary school.

Mr. Blouser thought that the crowd would like to join in on some caroling and suggested that we all join in. He was wrong. While most of crowd were willing to humor this jovial man, I wasn’t about to be duped into such an obvious ploy and sat by silently as they finished their singing.

In an expression of the trite, they program was laid out by grade to follow progressively from K to 2nd grade without varying the line up at all. With a grown I watched as the combined morning and afternoon kindergarten class rose to being their portion of the show.

Now, after the first song, I was rather impressed. The song was short, and to the point. When you are being forced to sit in a packed gym with a bunch of noisy kids, short is your favorite word. However, by the second song they had lost me again. They launched into this rather long boring song about “beard of white, up all night, must be Santa, must be Santa”. During the chorus of the song the half pint kids broke into dancing. Dancing, in a public school. Frankly I was outraged. To add insult to injury, it was terrible. I mean if you are going to add a movement number to your show you really should hire the right people to do the job, Janet Jackson can be had without to much expense.

Just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse their closing number was “Alvin and the Chipmunks.” The only word I can think to describe it is “scandalous”. Not to be out done by Ms. Simpson and Ms. Lohan, it was pretty clear that they were background tracking and lip-syncing. What kind of example does this set for our young impressionable children? If your players cannot perform the material, perhaps you need to choose a different song. While the rotund child dressed in a red shirt with an A on it was amusing, I was too overwhelmed by the lip-syncing to give it much consideration.

Again, more group singing. I hate group singing.

My heart was lighten when I noticed that the 1st graders were up. Jace rose with the rest of his class but obviously he had grown disheartened by the program and decided to refrain from signing as a sign of protest, well at least for the first song. Again I was disappointed by the selection as it was unoriginal and not very forward thinking. All I want for Christmas is for a director to break out of the traditional mold and try something new. Jace started to perk up by the second song and was in full swing by the 3rd, and you’ll never guess who was Rudolph? Logan. See, I told you you would never guess (as an aside that was part of my conversation with Jace on the ride over).

At long last the program was nearing its end.

Dafyd’s class was full of life with him dead center. He was loud, vocal and full of animated hand movements. I was a little shocked at the choice of the song about the obese nature of Santa (so much so that he crashed through the roof and destroyed a small child’s bed).

Thankfully the program lasted less than an hour. In this reviewers opinion the show was unoriginal and lack luster at best, you won’t be seeing this on Broadway any time soon. Don’t expect this to have a long run.

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Okay, all joking aside I had a great time watching the boys at their annual Christmas program. It’s hard to imagine that I was ever that small. I wouldn’t have missed it for all the money in the world.