‘What’s the worst part in the school nativity play?’ – 21 answers from adults who clearly still have an axe to grind

Who can forget the thrilling excitement of going to school to begin rehearsals for the nativity play and finding out you’ve been cast as… inn keeper’s assistant number three? With no lines, just some earnest head shaking.

Over on the AskUK subreddit, user Inevitable-Debt4312 posed this question:

Nativity play – what’s the worst part? What do you think the best news for a parent would be? Your child has got the part of – innkeeper’s wife? Back end of donkey? Lamb? Shepherd’s dog? Someone said their offspring had been allocated ‘the barn’.

And you have to make a costume, of course.

And it seems that people are still bitter about the roles that their kids, and themselves, ended up with.

1.

‘My daughter is the cat this year. You know. The cat. The famous cat. Meow, etc.’
–Shadow-Inversions

2.

‘My daughter’s school this year had a shrew and Sam the stable boy and the narrators all dressed up as cowboys. They called it a Nativity hoedown.’
–trtrtr82

3.

‘Mine was an alien. You know. Famous aliens that came to Bethlehem to witness the birth of Jesus? It left me a bit concerned.’
–Natures_Stepchild

4.

‘Mine was ‘Australian Child number 3′.’
–thymeisfleeting

5.

‘I was a fish in a big scaly dress as a young boy.’
–Dazpiece

6.

‘In my infants school, if you didn’t get a part you sat on the floor to watch with the rest of the rejected kids. No choir, no costumes, just sit still, shut up and join in the last carol when told.

The teachers picked the cast from across the whole school so the chance of a part was pretty low. One year I was selected to be one of a host of 12 angels, but by the next Monday it was slashed to three, including Gabriel.

I didn’t make the cut. Still bitter after 60+ years.’
–Flibertygibbert

7.

‘I was made to be a fence as I kept on messing up my lines. Had to sit on all fours while there was a cardboard fence on my right side.’
–MontanaMinuteman

8.

‘I was a pile of hay. Basically had to just wear a ghillie suit and camouflage myself into the backdrop while my cousin sat there all smug getting to play Mary. We’re in our 30s now and still to this day she brags about being Mary (obviously it’s funny to us now). I’m still not over being a pile of hay though.’
–VanessaCardui93

9.

‘I was a childminder and looked after a little girl the same age as my daughter. One year she ran out thrilled as she was cast as an angel, my daughter ran out excitedly shouting ‘and I’m a pig!”
–Jamie2556

10.

‘I was a leaf. Don’t recall what I actually had to do (I was 4 at the time, 43 now), but the fact that I was a leaf gets brought up every year.’
–Ok_Sentence_4174

11.

‘I remember a very smug mum at school because her son got the part of Joseph in the nativity. Turns out in this particular version of the nativity it was the Wise Men who took centre stage, meanwhile Joseph had no lines.’
–Realistic_Goat85

12.

‘I have a younger cousin who got relegated to be a dancing mince pie.’
–AlternativeAd1984