"Shepherd was my favorite role," recalls Barry, "because you got to carry a stick, plus you spent most of the pageant waiting back in the closet with a rope that led up to the church bell and about 750,000 bats. Many were the happy rehearsal hours we shepherds spent back there in the dark, whacking each other with sticks and climbing up the ladder so as to cause bat emission products to rain down upon us.

"After a couple of years as shepherd, you usually did a stint as a Three King. This was not nearly as good a role because you had to lug around the gold, the frankincense and of course, the myrrh, which God forbid you should drop because they were played by valuable antique containers belonging to Mrs. Elson. Nevertheless, being a Three King was better than being Joseph, since Joseph had to hang around with Mary who was played by a girl. You had to wait backstage with this girl and walk in with this girl. Needless to say, you felt like a total wonk, which was not helped by the fact that the shepherds and three kings were constantly suggesting that you really liked this girl. So during the pageant Joseph tended to maintain the maximum allowable distance from Mary, as though she were carrying some kind of fatal bacteria."

Dave Barry's right. It wouldn't be much fun to play Joseph. Joseph appears to be an insignificant character in the Christmas drama. Joseph emerges from the shadow of Mary and the baby Jesus. All the attention is on Mary while Joseph hangs around with the shepherds and animals off to the side somewhere. Joseph has no lines to speak in the Christmas drama. He just stands there. Nowhere in any of the gospels does Joseph ever say a word.

We don't know a lot about Joseph other than he was a carpenter from the small town of Nazareth. "At first view there was nothing striking about this man. His simple, well-worn clothes revealed him to be a man of small means. He was a person of few words, much more apt to show his feelings by arriving at your door with his tool chest to fix that stool, table, or door latch. This man was a doer, not a talker; he was an unassuming person, who stood patiently in lines, waiting his turn." What we do know about Joseph is that he was a good man, a solid citizen any community large or small would be proud to call its own. And although we might not think of Joseph as a man of great faith, he really was.

Ron Newhouse

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