Yuletide Entertainments (1910)

Dec 22, 2011



Christmas recitations, monologues, drills, tableaux, motion songs, exercises, dialogues and plays, suitable for all ages. From the introduction: "It becomes more and more a part of Christmas gayety to present the legends, or the spirit of it, to the eye as well as the mind. For this purpose the following pages have been prepared in play and pantomime, songs and marches, drills and recitations. While the needs of adults have not been forgotten, those of the children have been most largely remembered, since Christmas is pre-eminently the children's festival. A word to those who take charge of such affairs may not be amiss. Precision of movement is the keynote of success for everything of this kind. This does not mean stiffness, but it does mean exactitude and certainty. Uncertain gestures in speaking; scattered attack and close in singing ; hesitation in acting ; and, more than all, careless motions and marching in the drills (corners not formed squarely, motions only half in unison, etc.) — all these are fatal to that success which makes such entertainments entertaining. Here, as everywhere else, "What is worth doing at all, is worth doing well."