St. Vincents parent helps school find true meaning of Christmas

Cottonwood Heights resident Michael O'Brien recently put his creativity and humor to good use to help students and families at St. Vincent de Paul School find meaning in the holiday muddle.

On Dec. 15, the students performed O'Brien's original Christmas play "Annunciation 2011." As the father of three past and current St. Vincent's students, O'Brien has been writing a new play for the school each Christmas for four years now. This year's production used familiar secular and religious holiday songs to explore the reasons for the season.

"People always think there's a war between secular and religious Christmas," O'Brien said.

In reality, good can be found in both, he said.

In the play, a St. Vincent's faculty member tries to find a way to remind the students at the Catholic school to keep Christ in their Christmas, and wishes that angels could come help him with this daunting task. He then goes home and turns on the TV show "American Idol," and to his surprise angels do come--and turn the show into a competition between choirs instead of individual singers.

Choirs groups made up of one older and one younger grade level each performed a medley of a secular and a religious song, including "Mele Kalikimaka/Mary's Boy-Child," "Must Be Santa/Little Drummer Boy," "The Who's Christmas Song/Do You Hear What I Hear?," and the medley from the Peanuts Christmas special "Christmastime Is Here/Hark the Herald Angels Sing." Major characters in the production such as Santa and the Grinch were played by the school's eighth graders.

After all the choirs performed, the competition "judges" ruled that all the songs were excellent, because all have good messages that tell us what Christmas is about. For example, both "Here Comes Santa Claus" and "The Little Drummer Boy" are about someone giving gifts.

The play ended with the finale song "Jesus Is," written by O'Brien and the school's Band and Music Director Scott Larrabee.

This year's play was O'Brien's last, since his youngest child is graduating from St. Vincent in the spring.

"He's a very creative parent," Larrabee said. "St. Vincent's has a huge amount of parent participation, so it's very natural that he does this."

The students also had some opportunity to let their creative juices flow in the making of the play. They did the choreography almost entirely on their own, by spontaneously trying moves during rehearsal, which were then solidified for the performance.

"When the kids work with [O'Brien], he brings a lot of energy so the kids' performances are more creative," Development Director Carol Barman said.