Alice Wendleken

Quick Facts

• Role: Prim, rule-bound friend of the Narrator; the perennial choice to play Mary in the church pageant
• First appearance: Early church rehearsals, already positioned as the “holy-looking” standard-bearer
• Key relationships: The narrator (friend/foil), Imogene Herdman (antagonist and foil), Mrs. Wendleken (mother and model)

Who They Are

At first glance, Alice Wendleken is the perfect church kid—neat, reverent, and immaculately prepared. She is the “holy-looking” girl who has always played Mary and believes that a pageant’s worth lies in polish and poise. As a foil to Imogene Herdman, Alice’s certainty exposes how tidy traditions can flatten the story’s mystery and mercy. Her fussy perfectionism (hair “all washed and curled,” Vaseline on her eyelids) reveals a faith tied to appearances and control, not curiosity or compassion. In this way, Alice embodies the book’s critique of the status quo and sets up the theme of Challenging Preconceptions: she knows the lines and the staging, but misses the living heart of the story and the people in front of her. Across the book, Alice symbolizes a surface-level piety that confuses “looking right” with being moved by The True Meaning of Christmas.

Personality & Traits

Alice’s personality is a fortress of propriety: she polices the rules to fend off mess, risk, and feeling. Beneath her self-certainty lies anxiety—her moral vigilance doubles as a defense mechanism. She measures holiness by cleanliness and correctness, making her allergic to improvisation and the Herdmans’ rawness.

• Judgmental and self-righteous: She keeps a literal “naughty list,” noting the Herdmans’ every offense—from smoking in the girls’ room to stealing pennies—so she can tally sin instead of extending grace.
• Tattletale as power: Alice funnels shocks to Mother—“I’d better tell my mother”—relying on adult authority to enforce her standards and amplify her judgments through gossip.
• Appearance-obsessed: She prepares like a pageant professional (washed-and-curled hair, shiny lids) and cares more about the “lovely picture” than the lived feeling behind it; Imogene “burping” the baby doll offends her aesthetics, not her empathy.
• Fearful beneath the polish: The moment she’s threatened with a pussy willow in her ear, she surrenders her cherished role as Mary—proof that her moral superiority doesn’t translate into courage.

Character Journey

Alice is intentionally static. She begins prim, certain, and critical—and ends the same way. While the narrator, the audience, and even the pageant itself are transformed by the Herdmans’ unvarnished wonder, Alice clings to protocol as if it were faith. Her mother’s closing dismissal of Imogene’s black eye—“only what you might expect”—underscores that the Wendlekens remain unchanged. By refusing to move, Alice highlights everyone else’s Transformation and clarifies the book’s claim: genuine encounter alters people; ritual without heart does not.

Key Relationships

• The Narrator: Their friendship runs on contrast—the narrator’s growing openness versus Alice’s rigid certainty. As the narrator learns to see the Herdmans with humility and fresh Perspective and Understanding, Alice’s running criticisms become a foil that sharpens the narrator’s change.
• Imogene Herdman: Alice’s clean, cautious world collides with Imogene’s messy, fearless one. Imogene intimidates her (the pussy willow threat), overturns the casting hierarchy, and embodies everything Alice believes a pageant must suppress—yet Imogene’s rough reverence ultimately reveals what Alice’s polish cannot.
• Mrs. Wendleken: Alice mirrors her mother’s values and methods—surveillance, report, and respectable outrage. Together, they lead resistance to the Herdmans’ participation, representing a church faction allergic to Inclusion and Acceptance.

Defining Moments

Alice’s defining moments reveal a single throughline: control matters more to her than compassion, and fear often drives her certainty.

• Losing the Role of Mary (In Chapter 3): Intimidated by Imogene’s threat, Alice chooses safety over status, vacating the role that once symbolized her virtue. This choice clears the stage for the Herdmans’ unconventional telling—and exposes the fragility beneath Alice’s superiority.
• The “Naughty List”: Caught scribbling the Herdmans’ offenses on a small pad, Alice literalizes her moral bookkeeping. The list reduces people to infractions and shows her preference for control over compassion.
• Whispering During the Pageant (In Chapter 7): Alice provides a running critique—objecting to “burping” the baby Jesus—precisely as the performance grows most sincere. Her whispering reveals her inability (or refusal) to recognize authenticity when it looks different from tradition.

Essential Quotes

Our Christmas pageant isn’t what you’d call four-star entertainment... my friend Alice Wendleken is Mary because she’s so smart, so neat and clean, and, most of all, so holy-looking.
This establishes Alice’s reputation as the default Mary and frames “holiness” as appearance-based. The narrator’s tone hints that Alice’s perfection is more cosmetic than spiritual.

Alice Wendleken must have been a little bit worried, though, because she turned around to me with this sticky smile on her face and said, “I hope you’re going to be in the angel choir again. You’re so good in the angel choir.”
Alice’s flattery is strategic—she’s shoring up the status quo. The “sticky smile” exposes her anxiety: even she suspects her grip on the pageant’s hierarchy is slipping.

“I don’t think it’s very nice to say Mary was pregnant,” Alice whispered to me... “I’d better tell my mother.”
Alice polices language to protect propriety, not truth. Her reflex to report to her mother shows how her moral authority depends on adult backing and social enforcement.

One day I saw Alice Wendleken writing something down on a little pad of paper... “And every time you go in the girls’ room,” she went on, “the whole air is blue, and Imogene Herdman is sitting there in the Mary costume, smoking cigars!”
The notepad becomes a symbol of Alice’s surveillance. Her outrage centers on decorum (smoke, costume, setting) rather than on understanding why the Herdmans act as they do.

I heard Alice gasp and she poked me. “I don’t think it’s very nice to burp the baby Jesus,” she whispered, “as if he had colic.” Then she poked me again. “Do you suppose he could have had colic?”
Even at her most disapproving, Alice betrays a flicker of curiosity. That second question hints at a crack in her certainty—yet she refuses to follow it toward empathy, staying loyal to propriety over wonder.