As a teacher who has had to put together Christmas plays and carol concerts… we really don’t put a huge amount of thought in to it. Yes we want to do a good job, yes we want to do something that’s as close to entertaining as we can manage, but do we go out of our way to be thought provoking or to make a statement… not usually!
Regardless of my personal beliefs that 2000 years on the nativity story would probably end up on Jeremy Kyle, the children on the whole really enjoy the story and on the whole we stick to the traditional version of it. That doesn’t mean to say that a girl won’t be one of the wise men etc… we generally just pick the children who are less likely to have a melt down in front of 200 parents*, or who will be heard over the clicking of fake camera sounds, babies crying and chairs scraping.
*that said I worked really hard with the quietest boy in my class to get his confidence and voice volume to a level that meant he could welcome and introduce everyone to our concert this year.