Dec 24 Sat Church of the Heavenly Rest has its annual Nativity Pageants, with Pierre the llama in attendance
Services with lambs and donkey thrill parents and blonde tots
Pierre keeps an eye out for wolves
The biggest attraction in Manhattan on Christmas Eve for many is one of the Pageant services at 3.30pm and 5pm at the Church of the Heavenly Rest at Fifth Avenue and 90th Street, where a host of little tots dressed as angels scamper up the aisle to take their stations as a choir at one side of the altar, soon followed by little boys, including three holding lambs baaing, and Joseph leading Mary on George the donkey, 25, where the Nativity scene is decalimed before the choir sings Silent Night, in what has to be one of the most beautiful performances of the most beautiful carol of all.
George is now completely docile but one year when he was younger for some reason turned right at the altar and trotted back to the rear of the nave again, where he is looked after in the vestibule and is approached by many tiny, cautious tots and babes in arms who want to pat and stroke his shaggy fur, while he stands there quietly with his eyes half shut. George's sleepy demeanor is partly due to his advanced age and partly to a recent operation to remove "sand" from his bladder, his owner told us, as after his performance he was loaded back into his huge van, to be taken, standing up all the way, to his stable on the West Side at 45 th Street.
This year all were joined again by Pierre the llama, who is too jumpy to be stroked and is always in motion looking here and there with his large brown eyes and a look which is more alert than any human in the church. Susan Dural his owner said she had bought him four years ago as a tot himself, at a fair, and he has proved a good guard for her sheep, who is unafraid of approaching scouting wolves and coyotes who might be thinking of attacking her flock, but who after taking one look at Pierre and his large cloven hooves run away quickly.
Both services are crowded with blonde children and their mostly blonde mothers and fathers all filled with the Christmas spirit of quiet Protestant manners and good cheer from the neigboring brownstones and high apartment buildings at 89th and 84th and Madison, as well as the solid apartment buildings of earlier times on Madison and Park Avenue, the latter with its lit Christmas trees standing in the divide in every block down towards the old Pan Am building in the far distance. On the corner at 94th and Madison the champagne and cake was laid out ready for the annual Christmas party at six for all the readers still faithful to real books with colorful and informative colors, bought at higher prices at a real little bookstore, with personal service from the staff dressed today mostly in red.
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