Feliz Navidad

Last night we went to The Starlet's school Christmas extravaganza. Us and about 300 other families were packed into the auditorium like sardines, all jostling to see our beloved offspring, all believing that our child was the true star of the show.

Her school is a huge promoter of political correctness and "tolerance" so we dutifully sat through all the different interpretations of Christmas you could shake a stick at. We started off with the secular Santa Claus Is Coming To Town number("You'd Better Be Good!"), moved swiftly along to Kwanzaa ("Umoja!"), touched base with the Jews in the Hannukah skit ("Dreidel, dreidel, dreidel!") and even mentioned Mohammad for the sprinkling of Muslims in the audience ("Salaam means Peace!"). In light of all the effort to include every possible religious/cultural combination, I was surprised we didn't get the atheist version ("God doesn't exist! Santa is a myth!").

It was interesting to note that amidst all this PC-ness, they never once mentioned Jesus and Mary in the stable nor the Three Wise Men. You remember that old chestnut? The one we used to see every Christmas when we were kids? I guess that's not considered the done thing anymore.

The downside of the show was that we had to strain to see over all the multitude of people in front of us, and I was constantly distracted by other people. For example, I couldn't take my eyes off this lady here, who was sitting directly in front of us.

She was wearing too tight blue jeans paired with a blue jean top that had weird embroidery on it, making up an odd kind of denim uniform ensemble. But the really eye-catching thing about it was the fact that her underwear kept peeping out at us the entire time. We observed that they were a festive red and comforted ourselves that least it wasn't a thong! But enough of that and back to the show!

The Starlet was in the Mexican version, Feliz Navidad ("Feliz Navidad!"). All the boys wore sombreros and the girls colorful dresses, and there was much dancing and twirling, which suited our girl to a tee. She loved every minute of it. And she was the true star of the show. You could see the concentration on her face as she counted her steps, kicked and spun around - no way was she going to miss a step! And when she and her partner moved to the front of the stage to execute a particularly tricky dance movement, the crowd cheered when they were done. We were very proud. And as always, just seeing the look of delight on your child's face when they spot you in the crowd is worth sitting through anything!