by Elesha Coffman

A church in Little Rock, Arkansas, made headlines in 1999 by offering a "drive-thru" Christmas. The church transformed its parking lot into an outdoor Nativity scene for people who wanted to get into the seasonal spirit without getting out of their cars. While it's an easy segue to exasperated cries of "McChristmas," the church's presentation is not just a product of our instant gratification society. Christmas-on-wheels traditions date back to the Middle Ages in the form of mystery and morality plays.

Drama had a hard road into the church. Greek and Roman theater were denounced by early Christians as decadent pagan entertainment. As Christianity spread through Europe, other folk festivities and theatrics were encountered and similarly denounced. But no matter how much the church tried to suppress these expressions, people liked pageants and dramas. So the church adopted a new strategy: If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

The church's first dramatic offerings grew directly out of the liturgy. Scenes from the Bible were soon added to the repertoire, particularly scenes related to Easter and the Nativity. These are commonly called miracle or mystery plays; later works that aimed to illustrate good and evil battling for possession of a human soul are known as morality plays. At first, church leaders themselves took principal roles in the presentations, but in 1210, a papal edict prohibited clergymen from appearing on a public stage. The laity assumed responsibility for putting on the plays, and productions grew in scope and popularity.

The plays were organized in cycles, or sequences of related scenes, often with comic or musical interludes (to work in elements of the supplanted folk celebrations). Each scene was staged by one of the town's guilds on either a raised platform or, by the fourteenth century, a decorated wagon. Not unlike the Tournament of Roses parade, these themed wagons would process around town with actors performing their designated scenes wherever an audience was assembled. Some towns' cycles have been preserved, including those from the English cities of Chester (25 scenes), Wakefield (30 scenes) and York (48 scenes), as well as others from cities on the Continent.

These medieval dramas reached the height of their popularity in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, and they had a significant influence on Elizabethan drama and other forms of literature. Shakespeare features guild actors in A Midsummer Night's Dream, and his plays generally reflect the mixture of solemnity and humor found in the morality plays. Marlowe's Faustus and allegories such as Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress also incorporate elements of the morality play tradition.

Little Rock's "drive-thru" Christmas is by no means the only contemporary example of medieval-style drama. The Bavarian city of Oberammergau has enacted the Passion and Death of the Lord at ten-year intervals ever since 1634, commemorating God delivering the town from a plague. Even the rural Indiana church I attended while growing up staged an outdoor Nativity every year, pressing all 75 of its members into annual service. Visitors rode haywagons through field and wood, stopping at eight scenes complete with plywood shelters, live animals, and shivering thespians. And every time I hear the words, "The people walking in darkness have seen a great light … " I'm there again, playing Isaiah at the manger tableaux, trying to keep the cow from eating my script.

* For more information on medieval religious drama, see:
www.funkandwagnalls.com/encyclopedia/
low/articles/m/m016002036f.html

http://search.britannica.com/bcom/
eb/article/2/0,5716,108432+2+105998,00.html

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