I moved to the Roaring Fork Valley in Colorado about six years ago, and although connected peripherally with the Waldorf School on the Roaring Fork, had not made a connection with the early childhood staff. At the WAPASA puppetry conference in 2023, I met one of the preschool teachers and having many stories worth of puppets packed away in boxes not being used, I offered them to her. As a puppeteer, I have an attachment to my creations but I also felt strongly that having them stored away and not being put into the service of the children was wrong. In one of those interesting twists of fate, shortly afterwards my granddaughter was enrolled in the preschool program and I offered to go into the classroom and perform one of my story aprons.

The teachers took me up on my puppet loan offer and gratefully used my Snow White and Rose Red puppets for their 2023 Winter Faire puppet show performance. I have been involved with puppets a long time and thought that I should have offered to go in and help with the choreography but not knowing most of them and not wanting to step on their toes, I didn't. Coming into this school year, they invited me to help with the Winter Faire puppet show and I gladly said, “Yes!”

I had suggested the story The Star Mother's Youngest Child, as I really love this cosmic/earthy Christmas story and the message that it brings. I have performed it with the sky scenes done with shadow puppets and the earth scenes with hand puppets, a combination that suites the story well. I approached the whole puppet show as a collaboration and not as though anything was set in stone. Being busy teachers with packed schedules, they didn't have much time for rehearsals or puppet creation so they opted to use mine. When one has created the puppets and already worked out the choreography for a show, it is a good practice of flexibility to be open to whatever arises within a group working together. On one hand, the teachers asked for direction from me and on the other, since they were all practiced puppeteers themselves, I wanted to leave them in freedom. Also, this was the first time that most of them had spent any time with me so there was that initial getting to know one another and building trust. There was a beautiful little dance that happened as we worked together, built the set, and rehearsed. The teachers tried different props and dismissed what wasn't working, eventually paring the stage down to what was essential and, coincidentally, looked like my initial inner vision of what it would be like. As the stage became less crowded, the puppets took on more and more life and expression. By the end of the story, the Old Woman and the Raggedy child were so full of love, one for the other, and I felt that translate to the puppeteers and the co-working. I realized that as we worked to ensoul the story, we knit a beautiful blanket of love and joy that held us all warmly within its reach. At the end of the performances, our hearts were all connected and I felt that I had also gained a new community.

About the story: Star Mother's Youngest Child by Louise Moeri is a story that I first came across in Festivals, Family and Food by Diana Carey and Judy Large. The puppet script has been edited for an audience of younger children.

STAR MOTHER’S YOUNGEST CHILD

Before the story begins all sing with snow falling:

Softly, Softly, through the darkness snow is falling. Swiftly, swiftly all about the winds are blowing.

There was once a woman who had outlived all her own family of parents and sisters and brothers. Having no children or grandchildren of her own there was no one to keep her company in her old age. She had lived out her life in the hut her parents had left her on the edge of the forest, and as the years passed, the villagers — just over the hill — gradually forgot she was there.
Once upon a Christmas the old woman sat drowsing and grumping before a low fire. “Just once, I’d like to have a real Christmas, with a Christmas tree, and presents, and candles lit, and music, and a feast,” she muttered.

She looked all around, but there was no one to talk to, no one to complain to, only her old dog sleeping and twitching on the hearth rug at her feet. “Uproar,” she said to the dog, nudging him in the ribs, “you’re a good dog, an excellent dog, but I can’t celebrate Christmas with you.”

“Just once! I’d like to celebrate a Christmas! Is that too much to ask?” And then, being tired, she went to bed.
Dimmer Switch Up

Now, there was another old woman who was troubled on that winter night. Up in the sky, the Star Mother was in great agitation. She was sweeping and smoothing the clouds, scrubbing the faces of the smaller stars, and cleaning the windows of Heaven so all of their brightest light could shine through.

Worst of all, she was constantly bothered by the peevish whining of her youngest child. The Star Mother’s Youngest Child—so new he had not yet been given a name — was dawdling and diddling around the sky, banging into constellations and scuffing up the clouds his mother had smoothed out so carefully. He fussed and he pestered, and nothing would please him.

Finally, in a rage, Star Mother seized a comet by the tail and waved it over her head. “Now, Youngest Child, unless you stop this chittering and chattering, this clittering and clattering, I don’t know what I’m going to do.’’

Youngest Child howled and hopped around, and sobbed.
“What’s the matter?’’ cried Star Mother. “Here it is Christmas Eve, and of all nights of the year, the sky must be its most beautiful! And with all this work I have to do—cleaning and polishing and dusting and sweeping — I have to be bothered by a cranky Youngest Child!”
Youngest Child howled even louder. “Mother!” he wailed, “just once I want to celebrate Christmas like they do down there.” He leaned out the window and pointed to the earth, floating like an iridescent green Christmas bauble far below. Star Mother put down her comet and stopped to listen, as all good mothers do, her hands on her hips and her hair all spangled with dust of stars. “Well,” she said thoughtfully, “if that’s all that’s troubling you, I suppose it could be arranged — but only this once! Would it really make you happy, Youngest Child?”
“Oh, yes! mother,” cried Youngest Child. “After all, by next year I’ll have grown so big I’ll have to take my place in one of the constellations, like all your other children, but this year — this Christmas I would so love to celebrate with a Christmas tree, and candles, and presents, and music. Is that too much to ask?” “Suppose not,” grumbled Star Mother, smiling to herself. “Now, run along, and I’ll think of a plan.”

Dimmer switch down, Descending harp music.

All Sing:

Open up the door, I pray, tis so dark and cold the way

But then there was a sound that did wake the old woman.

Child bangs on door three times.

“Hello, the house! Wake up! Wake up!”
Grumbling and wheezing, the Old Woman roused herself, threw back her blankets. Fumbling for her slippers, she drew a shawl around her shoulders and stumbled across the floor. “Who’s there?”
The old woman opened the door.
There upon the doorstep stood the raggedest, most unattractive child she had ever seen. He had patched up clothes of some uncertain style, a wrinkled brown face, and spiky, yellow hair that stood up like dry grass all over his head. Worst of all, he looked both cold and hungry.
“Well? Well?” shouted the Old Woman, who was a little hard of hearing, “Who are you? What do you want?”

The Raggedy Child stood blinking and shuffling on the doorstep. He seemed as nonplussed upon seeing the Old Woman as she was upon seeing him.
“Did you want to see me?” asked the Old Woman.
“Not very bad,” admitted the Raggedy Child,

“Well?” shouted the Old Woman again. “What is it you want? We’ll both freeze to death with the door open while you stand there tongue-tied.”
“I was looking,” said the Raggedy Child at last, “for Christmas.”
With a howl the Old Woman threw up her hands. “Mercy! Mercy!” she cried. “To be wakened on a freezing day like this by a vagabond whose wits have evidently frozen too! Looking for Christmas! I’ll be bound—and where did you expect to find Christmas? Here? Well, come on in.”

Time elapses with glockenspiel.

“What are you going to do?” asked the Raggedy Child. “Chores,” snapped the Old Woman. “What else?”
She took a bucket from the bench and went out. The Raggedy Child followed her. The sun had risen into a dazzling blue sky but seemed not to have warmed the air at all. As they walked toward the cow shed their breath hung in front of them in a white mist and their noses pinched together.

The Raggedy Child followed at the Old Woman’s heels, while Uproar floundered beside them through the drifted snow.
“Hey!” cried the Raggedy Child. “I see one! I see one!” “What? What? Where?” cried the Old Woman, expecting a wolf at the very least.

“A Christmas tree!” cried the Raggedy Child. He had left the path and gone a bit toward the woods, and he stood there pointing. His strange little face glowed and his spiky hair stood up as if the wind were blowing through it. Before him was a small green Fir so plump and pretty it would have made a model for any Christmas tree in the world. Its feathery branches moved and the icicles danced and tinkled. The Old Woman stared. Well, it did look a little like a Christmas tree ...

“What do we do?” cried the Raggedy Child. “Now that we’ve found our Christmas tree?” He was dancing around in the snow and yanking on the fringes of her shawl. “Is there something more we should do?”
“Well, I should think so,” growled the Old Woman. “We have to cut it and take it inside the house. You certainly don’t think a body can have a proper Christmas tree out here beside the cow-shed, do you?”

In a moment the Old Woman fetched her axe from the lean-to, cut the tree, and carried it into the house.
Glockenspiel.

“There, now!” she cried in some irritation. “That’s what a Christmas tree looks like!” She stuck the end of the trunk of the tree in an old leaky bucket and made it tight with rocks. And so, it sat beside the fireplace, green and wonderful. “Well,” said the Old Woman, pinching her lip between her fingers, “it lacks a few things yet . . .” And so, she went about the house, opening boxes and drawers and fumbling on shelves and under the bed. At last she had assembled a little pile of things. In a few moments her nimble fingers had attached them to the tree. The tree fairly glowed. “Now, that’s what a proper Christmas tree should look like,” said the Old Woman.

The Raggedy Child sighed. “It’s beautiful,” he said, and his odd brown eyes twinkled deep in his crumply face. “Now, it must be time for the feast.” “Feast!” screamed the Old Woman. “Well, I never!” But she started to cook. Time elapses with glockenspiel.

“Come and eat,” said the Old Woman as she lighted a candle and set it in the middle of the table. “Tut!” she cried then as the Raggedy Child grabbed his spoon — “not till after I’ve asked the blessing: — For what we are about to receive, we say Thank You.”
The spoons clinked and clanked against the bowls and the bread crunched as they bit into it. The candle sputtered and the fire sparkled and the feast, if that’s what it was, was merry. The Old Woman told a few jokes and the Raggedy Child laughed, and the sound of his laughter was so great it must have echoed clear up to the stars, for it filled the house to overflowing.
“Now, it’s time for you to open your gift,” said the Old Woman at last. “Of course, it’s not much. She handed him the little package — almost-no, not at all reluctantly. The Raggedy Child took the gift and turned it silently over and over in his hands. He seemed to be absorbing the whole weight and feel of it—the crackle of the paper, the silky feel of the string. At last he opened it.
And the smile that spread across his homely face so transformed it that the last bit of resentment left the Old Woman forever. “A buckle!” he shouted. “A silver buckle! Of all things in the world, the one I most wanted!” And he threw his arms around the Old Woman and hugged and kissed her till she was quite worn out with all that love.
“Ah, now—it’s nothing—nothing much— only a buckle,” said the Old Woman. “Only a buckle! Why, it’s the greatest, most beautiful, most valuable buckle in the whole world!” cried the Raggedy Child. “And I’ll wear it on my belt forever. You’ll see.”
Suddenly he fell silent, and the Old Woman roused herself and looked around. Without her realizing it, dusk had fallen, and already the first stars were beginning

to show in the sky. The Raggedy Child rose and went to the window. “I must go,” he said. “It’s getting late.”
“Already?” cried the Old Woman. “But wait— we’ve not had any music yet—” The Raggedy Child opened the door. Across the snow came the sound of the village church bells, clear as birds calling through the winter night.

Bells sound.

“There is the music,” said the Child softly. “Good night. And thank you—thank you—’’ And he was gone.
Ascending harp music.
Then she noticed the other gift lying under the tree. Strange, she wondered what the Raggedy Child had found to leave her.

She picked it up surprised at its great weight. But it didn’t rattle. Carefully she opened the string, and lifted back the paper. And as she did so, out came the sound of bells, and the sound of laughter, and the smell of stew and baking bread, the light of a candle and the light of stars.
“I’ll keep it forever,” the Old Woman said.
The Old Woman sat on by the fire, rocking and grumping. She was aching tired but happy, in the strangest way. “Uproar,” she said, nudging the old dog at her feet, “what a day it’s been, what a day it’s been. What a Christmas!”

Dimmer switch turns up.

All Sing:

Clearly, clearly, up above the bells are calling. Brightly, brightly deep within a star is glowing.