Guest author Stephen Sheen contributes his thoughts on the Christmas Plays that are performed in Waldorf Schools, with added quotes from Rudolf Steiner’s lectures that point to the esoteric wisdom in the scenes of the Paradise Play.
CHRISTMAS PLAYS IN WALDORF SCHOOLS
I have been associated with the Oberufer Christmas Plays all my life. Watching them for many years as a student, acting in them for over 25 years as a teacher, and producing them for 20-odd years at The Cape Ann Waldorf School.
Note: The independent non-profit school, founded 1986 in Gloucester, Massachusetts, as The Cape Ann Waldorf School, is now called Waldorf School at Moraine Farm
So you can perhaps imagine why I am sad and concerned when the trilogy of Christmas plays is no longer performed at a school.
A great shift has taken place in the teaching, and in the circumstances of teachers, and I understand the reluctance to give up several evenings at this busy time of year for rehearsals and performances.
Of course I am aware that this is not 1919 and Waldorf Education has had to develop to meet the changing needs of the present time, but I think there are certain fundamental principles or threads that run through Waldorf Education and make it still unique, though the mainstream has meanwhile realized the value of teaching not just the head, but also the heart and hands.
Rhyme, rhythm and ritual are such fundamental principles. Certain rituals that began in Rudolf Steiner’s days have stood the test of time, and one of these, I believe, is the performing of the Christmas Plays.
Why are these plays performed?
Steiner spoke in several lectures of the importance of these plays, their symbolism and origin.
You can find these lectures and the following quotes at rsarchive.com
“We need only go back two centuries further to find something else which strikes us in the highest degree as peculiar. The very manner in which these Christmas Plays became part of the life of the central European villages in which they arose and gradually evolved, shows us how powerfully the Christmas thought worked there.”
“Others collected such Christmas Plays in different areas, but what Karl Julius Schröer was able to find at that time of the performance of these Christmas Plays, and the customs connected with them, can enter our hearts deeply.”
“Christmas is a festival connected above all with the joys of childhood, a festival in which a part is usually, if not always, played by the Christmas Tree brought into the house from snow-clad nature outside. Our thought also turns to the Christmas Plays so often performed among us, and which for centuries have brought uplift to the simplest human hearts at this season by reminding them of the great and unique event in earth-evolution when Jesus of Nazareth, or, to be quite exact, Jesus who came from Nazareth, was born in Bethlehem.”
“This comes to expression in the fact that the real symbol of Christmas – the Crib – so beautifully presented in the Christmas Plays of earlier centuries, is gradually being superseded by the Christmas Tree which is, in reality, the Tree of Paradise.”
Background information About the Oberufer Christmas Plays
A Cherished Tradition
Every year, the trilogy of plays is performed by the teachers as a Christmas gift to the children and the school community.
Many Old Scholars and ex-parents told me how important it was for them to see these plays each Christmas, virtually unchanged except for the players themselves. And how exciting it is, especially for younger children, to discover their teachers behind the greasepaint in their various roles.
The Paradise Play
The Paradise Play belongs to a sequence of medieval Christmas Plays that were performed by the people of Oberufer, a town on the Danube. The other two plays tell the story of the shepherds and the three kings who seek out the newborn Christ Child.
“If we take the five books of the Pentateuch, we shall find therein many things which indicate the development of mankind since the Lemurian Epoch. The story of Adam and Eve and their descendants is not simply to be taken literally, in a naïve fashion. I would ask you to take into account that in the Pentateuch, in Enoch, in the Psalms and some important chapters in the Gospels, in the Epistle to the Hebrews and some Epistles of Paul and in the Apocalypse, we are dealing wholly with the work of initiates, so that in these writings it behoves us to search for an occult meaning.”
“The God who is presented to us in the Old Testament gives one commandment to the human being, represented by Adam and Eve: You may eat from all the fruits of the garden; only the fruits that grow on the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil must you avoid, because they who have eaten of that fruit would be cast out of the original scene of their existence.”
The Fall from Grace
Though it is integral to the other two, the Paradise Play is often no longer performed for reasons of political correctness, because Eve appears as the culprit.
As a footnote I would like to add that the school where I produced these plays did not do in-school performances because of the ethnic and religious mix of the families. We offered them after school.
The Paradise Play tells the story of Adam and Eve’s expulsion from Paradise. One might well ask, what has this story got to do with the birth of Jesus and the advent of Christianity?
“And just as Christmas day, the 25th of December, was preceded in the church calendar by the ‘Day of Adam and Eve’, so what was considered the actual Christmas Play was preceded by the so-called Paradise Play, the play of Adam and Eve in Paradise, where they fell victim to the devil, the snake.”
“We can observe that the luciferic realm works more from within. Lucifer has to be there with Eve as she sets about making herself beautiful. She must appear beautiful to herself, so that she can become the being who finds herself essentially beautiful and whose beauty brings about the Temptation. In order for the counterpart of this to enter into the course of Earth evolution, Ahriman must act: he must act so that the sons of the gods will find the daughters of mankind beautiful, that is, so that they see beauty in objects. Lucifer had to act in order to influence Eve so that she would feel herself beautiful and could bring about the Temptation. In order for it to become possible to behold something as beautiful, and possible for beauty to become an external cause, Ahriman was necessary.”
Cecil Harwood, a founder teacher of Michael Hall (the first English-speaking Waldorf School) who translated the plays, writes in his introduction:
“The Paradise and Shepherds Nativity Plays were always associated together; for in the Middle Ages they still knew what modern human beings have forgotten, that there is no meaning in the Redemption without the Fall, and that in the words of the medieval carol: ‘Had not the apple taken been / The apple taken been, / Then had never Our Lady / A-been heaven’s queen.’”
Adam lay ybounden
Bounden in a bond
Four thousand winter
Thought he not too long
And all was for an apple
An apple that he took
As clerkës find it written
Written in their book
Had not the apple taken been
The apple taken been
Then had never Our Lady
A-been heaven’s queen
Blessed be the time
That the apple taken was
Therefore we may singen
Deo gratias!
Christmas Plays Today
Whether one believes in the creation myth or not, or the two accounts of the birth of Jesus by Luke and Matthew, I think one can agree that the symbolism of the Tree of Good and Evil is relevant for us today.
Also, we should view these plays in the spirit in which they were performed in medieval times, and not through the lenses of today’s political correctness.
Gender Equality
It may seem that the biblical story casts Eve as the culprit, and Adam as the more important partner. But the lines of the Paradise Play have God create Eve from Adam’s rib, saying:
Adam, arise and stand upright,
Behold thine equal come to light.
Also, at the end of this play, I feel sure that Cecil Harwood would not have objected to the following amendment:
See, Adam and Eve such wealth have won,
Like to gods they have become.
Knowledge they have of Evil and Good,
They can lift up their heads on high,
Whereby they live eternally.
The Symbol of the Fall
Perhaps it is not a coincidence that Steve Jobs, founder of the Apple empire, used as his logo the apple with a bite out of it.
“Let us think, for a moment, about that picture, which we have often discussed from various aspects, relating to the first stage of human evolution on earth – of man’s life in Paradise, as we find it described in the Bible. Let us think about this picture of Adam and Eve in Paradise, the first human beings – Eve biting into the apple and giving the apple to Adam. Let us think of the picture of the Serpent on the Tree, tempting Eve.”
“As the Light Bearer he (Lucifer) has particular gifts for humankind, especially that of wisdom, the gift he first offered to Adam and Eve. By their eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, Lucifer promised that they would be as gods.”
“How man got this capacity is described in the Bible, in the great symbol of the Fall, in the scene of the temptation, where the Devil or Lucifer appears to Eve and persuades her to eat of the Tree of Knowledge. Through that, man obtained free will; with it he began the second part of his evolutionary path.”
Think what computer technology has brought about in the last thirty-odd years!
It has revolutionized our world, and many would argue that it has been a force for good in disseminating knowledge, connecting people at the touch of a button, and in countless other areas of our life today.
But it has also been used in negative, evil ways, compromising personal data, interfering in the democratic process, enabling cyber bullying, and perhaps future cyber warfare.
Above all, computer technology has become an addiction for many people, especially the young, with as yet unknown consequences.
Picturing Redemption
So I believe we are blessed by having such archetypal events presented to us in these plays at this time of the year, for they can bring home to us the responsibility we have as parents and teachers in rearing and educating the citizens of our future world.
Stephen Sheen, born 1935, taught at Michael Hall, the UK’s oldest Waldorf School, where his father Arthur was one of the first teachers. His four children were also educated there. In 1987, Stephen and his wife Libby left England for the USA to support a new Waldorf School. There he also produced the Oberufer Christmas Plays. After decades as a sports and class teacher, Stephen became a roving mentor, and in retirement co-authored a book on Michael Hall’s history. This article is a digest of thoughts he addressed to colleagues in earlier years.
See also Rhyme, Rhythm and Ritual by Stephen Sheen
USEFUL SOURCES:
Online archive of Rudolf Steiner’s works rsarchive.org for keyword searches
The scripts for all three plays can be obtained at the Rudolf Steiner Bookstore
Free PDF of The Oberufer Shepherds Play – English Performer Edition, Text and Music
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