ONE of the great delights for parents is seeing their children perform their Christmas plays.
And as these pictures from the Oxford Mail archives show, little has changed over the years.
More than 100 pupils at St Nicholas School, Old Marston, Oxford, took part in a production of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
Picture 1 shows the photographers, with their impressively-modern cameras in 1981, flocking to see Charlie when he is invited to the factory.
Memory Lane this week
A spot of DIY helped depict the story of Jesus’s birth at Hagbourne Primary School in 1984.
Lindsay Ball, Andrew Foysuth and Owen Bishop, all 11, and Anna James, 10, made nine figures and two animals in their pottery class to create the Nativity scene.
Anna and Oliver Smith, six, are seen in Picture 2, below, placing the figures in the crib.
At Combe Primary School, near Woodstock, two performances of pupils’ Nativity play were given on successive evenings in 1964.
Deborah Goodland and Timothy Bullock, surrounded by the angels and other members of the cast in Picture 3, below, took centre stage as Mary and Joseph.
Even angels need the comfort of a thumb to suck in times of excitement, especially when they are only four.
Behind the tinsel and the crown, little Jennifer Beveridge, in Picture 4, below, looks spellbound by the Nativity story at the Prospect Road Nursery School in Banbury in 1980.
Costumes were made to last at the Woodpecker playgroup at Finstock, near Witney – they were used for the Christmas production in 1985 for the 12th successive year.
The children, seen in Picture 5, below, performed in front of parents and friends and were “really super”, according to playgroup supervisor Sonia Gore, who narrated the story at the village hall.
Radley Primary School broke with tradition and jumped the gun with a pre-Christmas pantomime in 1992. Francesca Dumas, 11, in Picture 6, below, played the title role in Cinderella and the Lost Shoe.
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