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!

Think they should scrap it altogether.

The small stuff gathers until it's big stuff.

It's the same crap every year.

Poor sod didnt get the part they wanted.

Nothing new.

If she’s the Inkeeper’s wife, the boy should be the inkeeper’s wife’s husband IMO

That's why I suggested they're both simply "The Inkeepers"

And this is why the world has gone mad ! As many others have said this is set 2000 years ago and has always been a non part to be honest. And I’m writing this as a staunch feminist !! You need to get a grip !

You are not being unreasonable OP this is 2019 how dare they!!!

Oh after you have dealt with this make sure you contact the makers of the Godfather films to and make them change it to the Godparent!!!

Jesus Christ if this is all you have in the world to get hung up on then you count yourself lucky!!!

@BillHadersNewWife - but you're happy to be a future wife?.......

My son is an elephant who goes to Bethlehem to see the baby Jesus. Explain that one!

Either they already had the costume or your ds insisted, I hope it is the latter.

[Shirley] Jackson was not immune to the cultural expectations of the world in which she lived. When she arrived at the hospital to deliver her third child and was asked her occupation, she responded “writer.” The nurse taking her information responded, “I’ll just put down housewife.”

You've out-snowflaked anyone I've seen on here.

Just for absolute, no argument about it, clarity- are you all saying that the immaculate conception refers to Mary's birth and not Jesus's?

Yes, that is what it means. Nothing to do with anyone having sex, just about Mary being special.

I've always thought it meant that Mary didn't shag Joseph to beget Jesus.

That's the virgin birth.

So does that mean Mary DID shag Joseph? I'm so disappointed in Mary!

M and J got married and had more kids. They shagged.

For god sake it's a nativity play at school!!

Seems to me in 2019 every bugger wants to be outraged by something. The world has gone fucking mad!!

To be clear, I am not 'that parent' at all.

With a child of 6 you have many years yet to learn to be "that parent" and you're top of the class so far acting like this.

I was an innkeepers wife back in 1989. As I was waiting back stage (behind the PE equipment curtain) I was wobbling my wobbly tooth and it came out. I walked on that stage to gasps because my mouth was dripping with blood.
I stole that fucking show. Serves them right for not making me Mary.

I once went to a nativity where the innkeeper told Mary and Joseph to come in and they would make room for them.

Everyone thought it was hilarious but ruined the play!

I once went to a nativity where the innkeeper told Mary and Joseph to come in and they would make room for them.

Oh god, don't put this!!

There will be a whole new AIBU thread on how someone was outraged that the innkeeper didn't make room in the inn. After all, this is 2019!!

Why don't they have The Inkeeper and The Inkeeper's Husband?

Perhaps the innkeepers wife played no part in the actual day to day running of the inn. Are you assuming her occupation?

How can we all be so certain that there were no female Innkeepers, or indeed that the original scroll texts specify the sex of the original innkeeper? If there even was one?

Layers upon layers of re-telling, supposition and embellishment of a story told down the ages.

I agree with you OP, in telling a story based on such source material, and in modern times, she could have been the Inn Manager, Owner, anything.

My Ds1 was a ‘Mexican Dancer’ in the nativity, which stretches credibility far more than the idea of a woman letting out rooms in her house when all the world descends on your village to be taxed.

Wait till you find out about the characters in Shakespearerian plays 😮

I think just complaining about the name when it is retelling a historical event is not the right idea. More valid to ask why the part exists other than to have more children in the play, as Mary and Joseph never got into the inn.

1. It was Mary that was conceived immaculately-that is without sin- so she could be a proper vessel for Jesus. Jesus was “begotten of the Holy Spirit” so his birth was a “virgin birth”. He is said to have had younger siblings, presumably conceived in the usual way.
2. Some of the characters in a traditional Nativity Play are biblical and possibly also historical. The Innkeeper’s wife is not one of them. Neither is the Innkeeper- although an inn is mentioned in Luke (I think).
3. The Innkeeper’s wife is often a very good part with lots of lines and often a song. It probably originated in Mummer’s Plays where lots of characters were added to the story for laughs and a bit of raunch. Incidentally, female ale wives and tavern keepers are surprisingly common throughout history. The idea that women stayed silent and didn’t work outside the home until 1960 is completely erroneous. And the impression that they didn’t has been perpetuated by the fact that they weren’t recorded. A woman man very well have singlehandedly been running an Inn for an absent, feckless, dead or otherwise unavailable husband- but it still

would have been called Reuben’s Tavern. Naomi would have been invisible in the records - simply the “Innkeeper’s wife”, if you will.

1. Children learn how the world is from a million tiny things. Each one of them is unimportant in itself, but they add up. So every time they see men presented as the main character and women the secondary one, it adds a tiny reinforcement to the “male default” which is still sadly prevalent even in 2019. Giving the innkeeper’s wife a name seems like a tiny thing- but it is so easy to do, and doesn’t add to the evidence that they will have already got from observation of life, books, telly and everywhere that men are the main characters and women the secondary ones.

Yes @BertrandRussell! This. Exactly this.

Yawn.