Looking Back: Where Angels Hover

From June 1943

Where Angels Hover

By the Rev. W. M. Macartney, MA, Lovedale

Every Christmas the children in Wards 7 and 8 of the Victoria Hospital, Lovedale (South Africa), perform a Nativity Play. It is, however, very difficult to produce this play. For the children are not normal children, nor are the wards normal wards.

All the children have diseased bones. Sometimes they have tubercular conditions of the spine. Sometimes their legs or arms are affected. The cure for these conditions seems to be complete rest for the part affected. Thus most of the children are strapped securely to their beds so that perforce their backs are rested; others wear on their legs cases of plaster of Paris. Only about half a score can walk. Yet these children performed a Nativity play.

Those who could walk were given the parts of Mary and Joseph, the Angel Gabriel, Simeon, and the shepherds. This created no difficulties in some scenes. The Angel announced to Mary the great news of the Child Who was to be born. Mary went to Elizabeth. Elizabeth was lying in bed; but there she and Mary could speak together. But what of Michael who, in the play, appears to the shepherds? And what of the multitude of the heavenly host, eager to break into ‘Glory to God in the Highest,’?

Michael and the angels are prisoners in bed – they cannot go to the shepherds. So, in the play, the shepherds walked to the bed where Michael lay. Many of those who saw the little shepherds hirpling to the bed of the Archangel had lumps in their throats. And the Kings? Poor boys, it will be many a day before they are able to walk to the stable in Bethlehem. So the Kings in their royal robes, and distinguished also by a notice on their bed – ‘The Three Kings’ - the Kings spoke across a passage to where, in another cot, labeled ‘Herod’, reclined a grim and bearded monarch. As the Kings could not follow the Star or go to the manger, Gabriel accepted their gifts and carried them to the cradle.

As with the action, so with the scenery. Here was Shakespearean simplicity. The Bethlehem scene was done on this wise. In a corner of the ward was the manger and by it sat Mary and Joseph. On two sides were beds. The third side was a semi-circle of nurses who, with candles, lit the scene, with flowers decorated it and who, in their blue uniform, suggested at once the vault of heaven and a concourse of people. The flight of the Holy Family before Herod’s wrath was a limping procession across the long ward and into the ward kitchen, on the lintel was the one word, ‘Egypt.’

There was some complaining by the actors at the time of the dress rehearsal. The trouble was this. Some of the Angels were lying on their backs; some, face downwards. When the costumes were tried on, the wings were fixed to the uppermost side of each child. No wonder there were complaints! Who ever heard, asked these lying on their backs, of angels with wings sprouting from their chests? They demanded that they be spared the indignity of being the first angels so enfeathered. Naturally, the doctor agreed to allow all the angels to lie face downwards so that the angel’s wings might grow from their backs.

What was the play like? In the past some of those who saw the play have wept unashamedly. They felt it was altogether too gallant of the children. Racked limbs unwillingly taking a shepherd to worship were a sight poignant beyond words. This year again the congregation was deeply moved. The play was so reverent, and the children were so sincere and absorbed in their activities, that they did transport those who saw them far from a hospital ward, far from South Africa, to the land of our Lord’s Nativity.

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