to be outraged by Nativity casting as 'Innkeeper's wife'!!!

[PIPERHELLO]

Daughter (6) has been cast as 'someone's wife' in the Nativity play at school. 'Innkeeper's wife' to be precise.

Err...hello!?

This is fucking not OK! In 2019, to be identified as 'someone's wife'.

Normally I am pretty relaxed about all things school, and I certainly feel sorry for he teachers' workloads, but come on people!? This is 2019 - no woman should be identified by her relationship to a man!? SURELY!

Itching to call them out on this. Itching!

Perhaps she'll be credited as Missus Innkeeper instead 😁

That's still better than DS, who was cast in his reception nativity as Camel Number Three, Hump Two---yes, the rear end of the camel. So proud.

The Immaculate Conception is nothing to do with the Nativity.

My memory is dim and distant, but isn't it theologically important for Jesus not to have had any contact with sin, original or otherwise?

The Immaculate Conception is nothing to do with the Nativity.

I think you’ll find it’s integral to it.

This thread is utterly hilarious. I wonder if it might migrate to Classics. It is right up there with screaming at the Michaelangelo in the Sistine Chapel, and snapped and farted.

Might I suggest names for the Innkeeper and his wife? Balonz for him and Neveah for her. Neveah being Heaven spelt backwards, you know.

Yes OP, you are being ridiculous, but you know that and obviously have kept a sense of humour about it. 🤣

I don't think I ever got to be anything in the nativity at school. I just got stuffed into the choir, which bored me silly.

I always think Nativity Plays should be more realistic. I mean, all of those animals around baby Jesus and not one of them even farts. There would have been shit everywhere. Baby Jesus apparently never screeched or had any poonamis, nor threw up all over Mary, Joseph or the Three Wise Men.

Should there also be Three Wise Women? Why not? Or maybe he wise men had wives.

Bloody Hell.

I was the multitasking Innkeeper and Narrator in the 1978 dramatisation of the Birth of Jesus.

And I was pissed off that I didn't get to be 3rd Angel on the right to Pauline's Angel Gabriel because they got to wear wings made out of coathangers and silver tinsel.

I've watched my own DDs play 12th Angel at the back, almost falling off the stage and Shepherd #3: the one with the Motheaten Sheep.

Well, I watched one - the eldest wasn't visible at any point of the proceedings --and I'm not sure I actually needed to see Shepherd 3 being a bit of a tit and yawning with her mates when Away in a Manger started.

I mean, all of those animals around baby Jesus and not one of them even farts.

you have just been very unlucky with the nativity you attended

Bertrand, "sheep" isn't an occupation either, but OP doesn't seem bothered about that. I'll have you know my sheep work very hard.

Oh shut up
We have to cast lots of children, they all need something to do, that's why there's usually 10 animals and 12 shepherds!

Off-topic (maybe) I’ve combined all the very important parts people have mentioned into one magnificent MN nativity. So we have:
Livestock
Trees
Stars
Angels
Oxen
Donkey’s trotters
Sheep
Pigs
Scenery
Cows
Nurses
Midwives
Spiders
Palm trees
The RNLI
Enough elephants to have a head elephant
Foxes
Camels (general)
Camel 2’s back end
Santa’s sleigh
Brussels sprouts
Aliens
Sand
Little drummer boys
Books
Doorknob
King “Harrod”
Presents
Lamp posts
Chicken herder
And of course... Balonz and Sandra, previously the innkeeper and his wife

Everyone just line up to the right and wait for the piano to start.

” But here is the way I see it: referring to a woman as someone's wife is dismissive and undermining. Now. People are finally starting to accept that it is not a respectful way to describe a woman. And yes it is a feminist issue. And it didn't happen overnight. So I actually think that children need to see that there is a difference between then and now. That they see the progress that has been made.”

You think teachers up and down the land are deliberately only casting boys in these roles so that they can take the opportunity to explain to the children that it used to be like that but isn’t now? Come on!

It’s normalising. Automatically having boys as the actual person and girls as the accessory to the person is normalising those stereotypes in the children’s minds.

And undermining that normalising of stereotypes slightly by having girls as the Innkeeper would be so easy to do and wouldn’t hurt anyone.

But apparently it would be dreadful and would be historically inaccurate. although having lobsters in Bethlehem is perfectly fine.

Good grief!

In OP's defence she seems to have a sense of humour and has taken on board some of the advice given ( now that I have started to read TFT).
Can't say the same about some other posters though.

Women are their own worst enemy a lot of the time they really are.

Well it's better than a fucking donkey.

@RightYesButNo 🤣🤣

So now that I am saying it is a good teaching opportunity, Flowery is still not happy because teachers never meant for it to be a teaching opportunity so It Does Not Count.
Good grief indeed.

referring to a woman as someone's wife is dismissive and undermining.

I disagree, and outraged about that comment.

again.

I think you're right, OP. It's insidiously dripping that girls don't have their own identity at an early age. What is wrong with having the innkeeper and the innkeeper's husband? Or Mr & Mrs Innkeeper.

As an aside, I was cast as a donkey one year and had my dad go in and complain that I wasn't an angel. For the life of me I don't know why he actually did it .

It's 2019 why are you assuming the 'Inn keeper' is a male
Because 2018 years ago - they would have been.

you have just been very unlucky with the nativity you attended

JusticeforSandra, I think I was. A good resounding fart would have livened up many a nativity play that I sat through when my three were that age.

That's still better than DS, who was cast in his reception nativity as Camel Number Three, Hump Two---yes, the rear end of the camel. So proud.

These are the moments you bring up again at their 18th birthday celebrations

Hell. When I first started MN-ing 13 years ago the vast majority of women posting would have agreed that women should not be defined by their husbands' occupations in education settings . Times, and MN, have changed more dramatically than I would have imagined possible.

two thousand odd years ago, their were no "inns," Berni or otherwise. That is a piece of seventeenth century KJB mediation.

These were people who slept in their mud huts with their livestock.

In the words of St Julian Cope, It's Just A Story.

VitreousHumour
and 13 years ago the vast majority of posters who have dismissed a trivial irrelevant thread like this as a big, and very funny, thread and kept their energy and outrage for real issues.

Feminism hasn't been damaged because a little girl is the Innkeeper's wife or hump number 2 whilst it's a boy who had the prime position of Camel front 1.

I agree, MN used to be funny - thankfully this thread is, and people taking it so seriously is making it even more amusing

She's lucky, I was an ox

Front or rear end?

No wonder penguins and dinosaurs were already on the raise 8 years ago

metro.co.uk/2011/12/12/kids-request-dinosaur-and-penguin-costumes-for-christmas-nativity-play-252134/