And to All a Raucous, Rollicking Good Night

EWELL, Md. -- Standing beside the church organist, the soloist slaps her thigh and bends her knees in time to the music as she sings, the notes fluttering as she lifts her arms dramatically for the finale.

She's a dead ringer for Ethel Merman. Which may sound a bit irreverent, except for the fact that tonight is pageant night, an event that in years past has conjured such "luminaries" as Hugh Hefner, Elvis Presley, Lawrence Welk, Sonny and Cher, Julia Child and the Energizer Bunny.

If the words "Christmas pageant" evoke visions of cookies and carols, the women of the ladies' aid group of the Smith Island United Methodist Church have elevated the usual holiday festivities to another dimension, here on this little island an hour's ferry ride from the Eastern Shore. Beyond the live nativity scenes, the "Silent Night" choruses and the cake and cookie exchanges, there is this: hard-working women, hands scarred and and chapped from years of crab-picking -- clad in spangled stretch tops and Christmas tree skirts buttoned over stretch pants doing Rockette kick-lines while shaking garland-wrapped hula hoops. Octagenarian grandmothers marching in a conga line of tin soldiers. And other far bawdier pieces of business, which necessitate a strict prohibition of men and are best left to the imagination . . . but more on that later.

No one's sure when it all started -- 20 years, 30, 40 years ago? Maybe more? But great-grandmothers who remember the pageant from when they were little girls are here to sit next to their daughters, granddaughters and old neighbors for the evening. Here, roughly, is the program: throw together some costumes, whip up a feast and gather a hundred of your friends to share an evening of holiday laughs and debauchery. It's the event that the women of this island anticipate all year, knowing they are guaranteed to walk away from it with stomach pains from having laughed so hard, a welcome release from the everyday discipline of work and propriety.

"We don't mind acting crazy in front of each other, but we're not going to do it in front of the boys," says Jennifer Dize, 57, who is on the food committee this year and makes one of the best seven-layer cakes on the island. "They'd probably take us to the nuthouse."

And so at 8:30 p.m., the tall, slender Christmas tree is pushed to one corner of the stage, and the lights go dark for the start of the show.

Patty Laird, 43, who wrote much of this year's script, kept a notebook of the happenings on the island all summer long and used that as her inspiration. Back by popular demand is the line of toy soldiers wearing black construction paper hats and garland suspenders, marching in formations and doing do-si-dos around the stage, with the group leader calling "Yoo hoo!" whenever anyone falls out of line. Somebody steps on an electrical cord, plunging the stage into darkness and stopping the music, until the cord is located and plugged back into the socket, and the routine goes on.

There are the queens from Tylerton (another part of the island), who sing of facelifts and miracle creams: "Jar of Wonder working cream, make our faces tight and green. So misleading, we're succeeding, looking closer to 19." There's the Elderhostel trip to the Wal-Mart, where seniors with walkers hobble and shout: "I gotta shop! I gotta shop! I gotta pee!" There's the trio that sings and dances with a weed whacker about an unfortunate run-in one Smith Islander had with a pile of dried-up cat dung.

"If someone said something that sounds like it could be funny, I'll fix it the way I want it," says Laird. "Sometimes people come to me with things and I have to tell them, 'That's not funny.' "

Men are banned, because the ladies want their freedom. Many of the gags and skits don't translate to an off-islander. These are the ultimate inside jokes for the ultimate community of insiders, cut off from the mainland and bound tightly together. The humor is broad and physical, with ample attention to sight gags involving bottoms and bosoms, one woman's adorned with tinsel streamers for an impromptu dance routine. Scatological bits lampoon the tourists who wander onto the island during the summer months. Subtle double-entrendres are in short supply; naughtiness is not. The Christmas dream sequence is as racy and ribald as after-hours cable. Sometimes just the suggestion of a word or a phrase they might smack their children for using brings down the house; anything not uttered in polite company -- "Viagra!" -- seems funny enough.

And all utterances and gestures are answered with giant whoops of laughter, crescendoes of hilarity, slaps on the table when the breath fails and the eyes tear.

Later, a pregnant Kristy Corbin, 25, will make a lovely Mary in the obligatory nativity scene, and there will be a montage of warmhearted skits, because, after all, you shouldn't have a pageant without recognition of the fact that it's a holiday of peace and joy. But right now, Corbin is shaking her head and saying, "Man, it's a good thing this baby doesn't have ears."