"The Herdmans were absolutely the worst kids in the history of the world. They lied and stole and smoked cigars (even the girls) and talked dirty and hit little kids and cussed their teachers and took the name of the Lord in vain and set fire to Fred Shoemaker’s old broken-down toolhouse.”
The book is narrated in the first person by the unnamed daughter of the director of the titular Christmas pageant. This opening line situates the basic conflict directly and immediately. That conflict is the Herdman kids against the entire town, basically. Of course, they prove not to be the worst kids in the history of the world, but as the title suggests, this is a story that gains much of its humor through hyperbole. The overstatement of the delinquency of the Herdmans is part of the point. One thing that can almost be counted upon as a sure thing is that any story taking place during Christmas—in which the Christmas story is the thematic bond tying everything together—is going to deliver a lesson. And the lesson is almost hardwired into this opening line. The unwritten Scrooge & Grinch Rule of Christmas fiction is that the hyperbole applied to any character at the start of the story is going to be revealed as such by the end of the story.,
“I couldn’t understand the Herdmans. You would have thought the Christmas story came right out of the F.B.I. files, they got so involved in it—wanted a bloody end to Herod, worried about Mary having her baby in a barn, and called the Wise Men a bunch of dirty spies.”
The transformation takes time. Not the transformation of the Herdman kids. Ironically, they remain pretty much unchanged over the course of the book. The transformation is undergone by the narrator and other members of the community who have looked negatively upon the Herdman clan. Even more deeply ironic is the means by which the narrator conveys her own transformative opinion of the worst kids in the world. One of the most fascinating aspects of the book is how the Herdman kids deconstruct the story of the nativity. The implication is that part of the negative view toward the Herdman kids stems from the fact that they are utterly unfamiliar with the Bible. The pageant is their introduction to what has commonly been termed the greatest story ever told and their reaction to it is subversive. The details of the story prompt questions that undermine the safely conventional views taught in Sunday School where probing questions usually are not allowed if not actively discouraged.
“Ralph and Imogene were there all right, only for once they didn’t come through the door pushing each other out of the way. They just stood there for a minute as if they weren’t sure they were in the right place—because of the candles, I guess, and the church being full of people. They looked like the people you see on the six o’clock news—refugees, sent to wait in some strange ugly place, with all their boxes and sacks around them.”
Epiphany is a literary term used to describe the sudden dawning of insight or illumination. This is the narrator’s moment of epiphany. The performance has begun, and everyone is anticipating the disaster they expect a cast filled with Herdman kids to be. The Christmas pageant has become something very much like the story itself. It has become ritualized to the point of losing its nuance and realism. Watching the nativity play out has become a story of mythic figures disconnected from the conditions in which the events allegedly took place. Having just been introduced to the Christmas story, the Herdmans have not yet had the opportunity to have recontextualized for them by ministers with an agenda. To them, it is a story of poor, put-upon people just like them that aren’t welcome in the better places of the town and are relegated to the status of animals. Or, as the narrator views it, unwanted immigrants just looking to escape an oppressive regime. In fact, she immediately goes on to describe how the scene taking place on stage is probably much closer to how the story really played for Joseph and Mary than any of the previous more polished productions of the pageant.
