The dress rehearsal smoke scare

The dress rehearsal smoke scare begins as an ordinary interruption to an exhausting Christmas pageant rehearsal and grows into a church-wide commotion. A five-minute recess turns into fifteen minutes, Imogene smokes cigars in a ladies’ room, and a report of smoke brings firemen to the Church. Although no church fire has been set, the evacuation and the rumors that follow threaten to derail the pageant. Instead, the uproar helps ensure that people come to see it.

Recess and the Smoke

By the time the rehearsal pauses, everyone is hot and tired, and most of the baby angels need to use the bathroom. Narrator’s Mother calls a five-minute recess, hoping the cast can then start again and proceed without further stops. The plan fails: the break stretches to fifteen minutes, and Imogene spends it smoking cigars in one of the ladies’ room johns. The delay matters because the rehearsal is already strained, but the immediate danger is not a fire. It is the combination of cigar smoke in an unexpected place and a bystander who does not know its source.

Mrs. Homer McCarthy opens the ladies’ room door, notices a strange smell and smoke, and runs to the Church office to call the fire department. At the time, the rehearsal is singing “Angels We Have Heard on High.” The sound of the fire engine, siren blaring and red lights flashing, interrupts the song. Firemen hurry inside, send everyone outdoors, and pull a large hose through the front door as they search for a fire. The shift from rehearsal to emergency response happens before the people present have established what is actually burning—or whether anything is.

Evacuation and Confusion

The evacuation spills into a crowded street: baby angels cry, shepherds climb over the fire truck, firemen and members of the pot-luck committee gather, and neighbors arrive to watch. Reverend Hopkins runs over from the parsonage in pajamas and a woolly bathrobe. The spectacle makes the scare public, while the cast and churchgoers remain unclear about its cause. The Herdmans also do not know what has happened. They seem to assume they must be responsible for whatever it is, and leave.

When Narrator’s Mother finally hears the account, she asks Mrs. McCarthy why she called the fire department. Mrs. McCarthy says the ladies’ room was full of thick smoke. Narrator’s Mother points out that it was cigar smoke and suggests Mrs. McCarthy became excited; Mrs. McCarthy replies that she does not expect to find cigar smoke in a Church ladies’ room, then turns and marches back to the kitchen. Her mistake is understandable within the scene’s confusion, but the response has already set other consequences in motion.

While people mill about outside, the applesauce cake in the kitchen burns up. That, rather than a fire in the ladies’ room, is the rehearsal’s actual fire. The pot-luck committee is angry about the lost cake; Mrs. McCarthy is angry, and Alice Wendleken says her mother will be angry when she hears. Some mothers of the baby angels are frustrated because they cannot find out what happened. The report that Mrs. Hopkins is angry because her husband ran through the streets in pajamas adds another strand of gossip to a commotion that began with an easily misread trace of smoke.

Rumors and the Pageant’s Audience

For Alice, the episode becomes the major sinful incident she had been hoping would occur. Mrs. Wendleken reads Alice’s notes and that very night telephones people she can think of in the Ladies’ Aid and the Women’s Society, most of the flower committee, all the Sunday-school teachers, and Reverend Hopkins. The rehearsal mishap thus expands beyond the people who witnessed it: reports circulate through church groups, making the episode harder to distinguish from the rumors attached to it.

Reverend Hopkins visits Narrator’s Mother because the accounts he has heard contradict one another. Some people say the Herdmans set fire to the ladies’ room; others say they set fire to the kitchen. One woman claims Imogene threw a flower pot at Ralph, while Mrs. Wendleken says the Herdmans talk about sex and underwear. Narrator’s Mother corrects these stories: Hobie Carmichael, not the Herdmans, was talking about underwear, and the Herdmans did not set anything on fire. The only fire was in the kitchen, where the pot-luck committee’s applesauce cake burned. The scare therefore produces a second event in the form of rumor: a cigar-smoking incident and a burnt cake become accusations of deliberate fires and additional misconduct.

Decision to Continue

With the Church in an uproar, Reverend Hopkins asks whether the pageant should be called off. Narrator’s Mother refuses. By then she is angry too, but she insists that the production will be the best Christmas pageant the Church has ever had. The narration acknowledges that this is her biggest lie so far, while also admiring her resolve. Her confidence is not evidence that the rehearsal has gone well; it is a decision to keep the production from being defined by the panic and the stories surrounding it.

Reverend Hopkins worries that nobody will come to watch. The outcome is the opposite: everybody comes to see what the Herdmans will do. The scare does not cancel the pageant; it heightens public curiosity about it. A rehearsal disrupted by a mistaken alarm, an actual burnt cake, and exaggerated reports ends by bringing an audience to the performance, though their stated reason is to see what the Herdmans will do.