Reverend Hopkins

Reverend Hopkins is the church minister whose authority helps keep the Herdman children in the Christmas pageant despite congregational protests. His role connects the pageant’s settled customs, including his son’s reluctant casting as Joseph, with the more demanding principle that the church must welcome children beyond its usual, orderly participants.

Identity and Pageant Tradition

The pageant follows a familiar pattern: the inn, stable, shepherds, and star, with casting assigned by age and custom. Reverend Hopkins’s son has played Joseph for as long as the narrator can remember. That apparent tradition does not mean the boy freely chooses the role: in one earlier year, nobody volunteered, and Reverend Hopkins told his son, “You’re going to be Joseph,” adding, “That’s it.” His son objected that he felt too big and foolish onstage and disliked being surrounded by younger children, but his father’s decision settled the matter.

Defending the Herdman Children

When the Herdman children volunteer for the leading roles, the prospect provokes complaints. Narrator’s Mother decides to make the pageant the best she can, with the Herdmans included; Reverend Hopkins, fed up with the objections, backs that decision. Rather than answer each protest individually, he reminds the congregation that Jesus’ words, “Suffer the little children to come unto me,” apply to all children, including the Herdmans. The appeal ends the argument, even silencing Alice Wendleken’s mother, and rehearsals begin the following Wednesday.

His response makes the pageant’s religious teaching a practical test for the congregation. The children are not accepted because the community has stopped fearing or disliking them; they are included because Reverend Hopkins insists that the principle applies even when the children are unwelcome or disruptive. In that moment, his clerical authority counters the group’s impulse to treat the Herdmans as exceptions to the rule.

The Church Uproar

Later, amid reports about what has happened at rehearsals, Reverend Hopkins visits Narrator’s Mother and admits that he cannot tell what is true. He relays conflicting claims: that the Herdmans set fire to the ladies’ room or the kitchen, that Imogene threw a flower pot at Ralph, and that the children talk about sex and underwear. Narrator’s Mother corrects the account: the children set no fire; the only fire was in the kitchen, where the pot-luck committee let an applesauce cake burn. She also identifies Hobie Carmichael, not the Herdmans, as the one who had talked about underwear.

Despite having defended the Herdmans’ participation, Reverend Hopkins asks whether the pageant should be called off. The episode presents him as a recipient of the church’s confused reports, not an eyewitness to the alleged incidents: he brings the rumors to Narrator’s Mother and seeks her judgment. His question registers how quickly anxiety about the children has grown into a wider institutional crisis, even after the congregation has been reminded of its obligation to include them.

Role in the Story

Reverend Hopkins is both the enforcer of a familiar pageant custom within his own family and the church leader who invokes a broader religious principle when the community objects to unfamiliar children. The contrast is not resolved into a portrait of flawless authority: he once makes his son take a role he dislikes, and later he wonders whether the production should be canceled amid alarming reports. But when exclusion is openly proposed, his clearest intervention is decisive. By invoking Jesus’ welcome of children, he helps ensure that the Herdmans remain part of the pageant rather than being turned away by the congregation.