The Herdmans' ham

The Herdmans' ham is the food-basket ham that Leroy Herdman brings to the Church Christmas pageant as the Wise Men's offering. It replaces the planned gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh with an ordinary household food, making the pageant's most startling prop also its most revealing gift: the Herdman family gives away something it received, and the narrator recognizes the act as unprecedented for them.

Origin and Meaning Before the Pageant

The ham comes from a Christmas food basket distributed by the Church's charitable works committee, on which the Narrator's Father serves. It is not stolen from someone else, as Alice Wendleken suspects when she sees Leroy carrying it. The narrator corrects her: the ham belongs to the Herdman family because it came in their own basket, and they are free to give it away. The distinction matters. The offering is not an act of taking disguised as generosity; it is a gift made from provisions given to the family.

The hamper's ribbon, still bearing a Merry Christmas greeting, makes its route visible. It has moved from the Church's charity to the Herdman family and then back to the Church, now as part of the pageant. The book does not say what happens to the ham after the performance, but its passage through those hands gives it a meaning beyond its use as food: the charitable gift becomes something the recipients can choose to offer in return.

That choice stands out against the narrator's understanding of the Herdman family's past behavior. At a fire, they had taken doughnuts intended for the volunteer firemen, eating what they could and stuffing the rest into their pockets and shirts; doughnuts were even visible around Ollie Herdman's middle. Against that remembered scene of taking, the ham's appearance as a gift marks a pointed reversal. The narrator admits that the children had never before given anything away except blows to other people, so the offering commands respect even before its place in the biblical story is considered.

The Ham in the Pageant

The prop appears during the Wise Men's procession. The audience has been watching the boys sing, while the Wise Men march up the aisle. Alice asks what the visitors are carrying, and the narrator can tell only that Leroy's object is heavy: he nearly drops it. The expected individual gifts have gone missing from the performance. Leroy has no jar of frankincense, and Claude Herdman and Ollie Herdman carry neither the gold nor the myrrh they were meant to bring.

Alice, already apprehensive about what the Herdman children might do, guesses that the heavy object could be a burnt offering. Instead, the narrator recognizes the food-basket ham, still marked with its ribbon. Leroy drops it in front of the Manger. In the established staging, small jars of bath salts stand in for frankincense and myrrh; beside them, the ham looks conspicuously out of place. Its weight, its practical use, and its charity-basket origin make the offering materially unlike the polished substitute props normally used in the pageant.

Yet the mismatch changes the scene rather than simply spoiling it. The Wise Men in the story bring gifts to the young child with Mary, and the Herdman boys' ham becomes their own concrete version of that gesture. The offering is neither precious oil, which Imogene Herdman had mocked as a poor present, nor a conventional stage object. It is food the family might have kept. The ham makes the act of giving legible in the terms of the children's own life, while also disrupting the pageant's familiar visual routine.

After placing the ham, the boys sit in the only space left. They do not carry out the expected conference or leave through another door, and Alice says they are ruining the performance. The narrator instead sees their sitting down to rest as fitting. The ham belongs to this same interruption: the pageant's customary sequence yields to what the children actually bring and do, and the narrator's response shifts from concern about broken convention to recognition of an alternative that makes sense within the scene.

What Remains Afterward

When the pageant is over, the Narrator's Father asks the Narrator's Mother what she is carrying. She answers that it is the ham: the Herdman family would not take it back. They also refused the candy and the little Testaments offered afterward. The object therefore does not simply complete a stage tableau and disappear from view; its refusal to return with its donors carries the children's giving beyond the performance, although the book does not specify who eventually keeps or uses it.

The Narrator's Mother also reports that Imogene asked for the Bible-story pictures. Imogene removed the picture of Mary and said it was exactly right. The ham and the picture become contrasting traces of the pageant: one is a practical gift left at the Manger, the other an image Imogene chooses to take with her. Together they connect the public performance to a response that persists after the costumes and collapsible Manger are put away.

Narrative Significance

The ham revises the meaning of a familiar gift exchange without erasing its awkwardness. To Alice, the Herdman family's reputation makes the object look suspicious; to the narrator, its source in their food basket resolves the suspicion and reveals the important fact that the children have voluntarily given something away. The difference between those readings is central to the ham's role: the object first invites fear of another transgression, then supplies visible evidence of generosity.

It also changes how the pageant's religious gifts are represented. Gold, frankincense, and myrrh are explained as the Wise Men's offerings, but the staged jars are only substitutes. The ham, by contrast, is real food with an identifiable history in the family's circumstances. Its value in the scene comes not from being an appropriate theatrical symbol but from the choice to surrender it. By the end, the narrator's memory of the Wise Men is inseparable from Leroy and his brothers bearing ham, while the image of Mary resembles Imogene: the pageant's meaning has been reshaped by the people who seemed least likely to understand it.