Leroy Herdman

Quick Facts

• Role: Third-oldest Herdman; one of the three Wise Men in the pageant; catalyst of the plot
• First appearance: Early chapters, introduced through school bullying and a notorious fire
• Key relationships: Charlie (target of his bullying), his siblings (especially Imogene and Claude), and Mother, the pageant director

Who They Are

Bold, rough-edged, and unexpectedly curious, Leroy Herdman is the Herdman most associated with disruption that turns into discovery. His bullying of Charlie over desserts sends the Herdmans into Sunday school in search of sweets, but what he finds there is an unsettling story about power, danger, and vulnerability that reshapes him. His arc distills the book’s interest in Transformation: a taker learns, awkwardly and genuinely, how to give.

The Herdmans are described collectively in the Full Book Summary:

"...six skinny, stringy-haired kids all alike except for being different sizes and having different black-and-blue places where they had clonked each other."

That image—scruffy, bruised, and unsupervised—places Leroy outside the tidy norms of the town. He enters the pageant as a Wise Man not to perform piety but to interrogate it, and his literal-minded questions strip the Christmas story down to what it costs and what it means.

Personality & Traits

Leroy embodies the Herdman mix of menace and blunt curiosity. He’s destructive without guilt, yet fiercely attentive once a story grips him. His practical worldview rejects empty symbolism and clings to what feeds, protects, and matters.

• Destructive and remorseless: He steals a chemistry set and burns down a toolhouse; his only regret is losing the chance to “make one or two bombs.” The episode frames him as more fascinated by chaos than constrained by rules.
• Bully turned catalyst: Repeatedly stealing Charlie’s dessert is cruel—but it’s also the domino that knocks the Herdmans into church, starting the book’s central upheaval.
• Inquisitive and literal: During rehearsals, he pushes on the narrative’s logic—“Who were the shepherds?”—and fixates on Herod’s power and impunity. These questions aren’t polite; they’re survival-oriented.
• Pragmatic giver: He dismisses “precious oils” as useless and later brings what he sees as a real gift: a ham. His practicality becomes a moral insight when it’s redirected toward generosity.

Character Journey

Leroy begins as a one-note antagonist—unyielding, gleefully destructive, and bored by anything that doesn’t explode. Sunday school exposes him to a story that runs on stakes he understands: a threatened child, a tyrant king, and bystanders who must choose sides. He initially reads the Nativity through force and betrayal—what if the Wise Men turned Jesus in?—revealing how violence has taught him to expect the worst. But the pageant moves him from suspicion to participation. In the Chapter 7 Summary, he and his brothers carry their family’s charity ham to the manger—an act that reverses his earlier thefts and honors what he values most: food that actually helps. This rough, sincere offering reframes the theme of The True Meaning of Christmas in terms he can accept—gifts that cost you something and meet a real need. As one of the Wise Men, Leroy also embodies the book’s insistence on outsiders as truth-tellers, challenging the congregation’s tidy assumptions and pushing them to see holiness without polish.

Key Relationships

• Charlie: Leroy’s theft of Charlie’s dessert is casual, cruel, and catalytic. Their antagonism launches the Herdmans into Sunday school and unknowingly makes Charlie the conduit through which Leroy encounters a different moral world.

• The Herdman Siblings: “Imogene looked after Leroy, and Leroy looked after Claude” sketches a battered chain of care inside a chaotic home. As a Wise Man alongside Claude and Ollie, Leroy works through the story as a team—arguing, translating, and ultimately co-creating a version that is brash, funny, and startlingly sincere.

• Mother: As pageant director, Mother becomes Leroy’s first patient authority figure. She fields his aggressive questions without shaming him, guiding his raw interpretations toward empathy and helping shift his Perspective and Understanding.

Defining Moments

Even Leroy’s worst acts become context for change; each event reorients his sense of what power is for.

• Burning down the toolhouse (Chapter 1-2 Summary): His glee at destruction and lack of remorse establish a baseline of amorality. Why it matters: The story must move a boy who loves explosions to value protection and care; the distance makes the transformation visible.

• Volunteering as a Wise Man: Grabbing the role in front of horrified church kids (including Alice Wendleken) cements the Herdmans’ takeover. Why it matters: It forces Leroy to inhabit a story he would otherwise mock, making him responsible to its meanings.

• Interrogating the Christmas story (Chapter 3-4 Summary): Leroy zeroes in on Herod’s unchecked power and the Wise Men’s choices. Why it matters: His hard questions expose the stakes adults gloss over; he grasps the danger, not just the sentiment.

• Bringing the ham: Carrying the family’s charity ham to the manger is the novel’s moral pivot. Why it matters: Leroy turns need into offering, replacing theft with sacrifice and challenging the congregation’s assumptions about reverence and worthiness—an emblem of Challenging Preconceptions.

Essential Quotes

"We mixed all the little powders together... and poured lighter fluid around on them and set fire to the lighter fluid. We wanted to see if the chemistry set was any good." This confession is chilling and funny at once, revealing Leroy’s thrill-seeking pragmatism—does it work?—and his indifference to harm. It frames the journey ahead: the pageant must redirect his appetite for action into care.

"What if we didn’t go home another way? What if we went back to the king and told on the baby—where he was and all?" Leroy imagines betrayal because betrayal makes sense in his world. The question forces the adults to confront the real peril of the Nativity and signals how seriously he’s engaging with the story’s moral choices.

"He must have been the main king... if he could make the other three do what he wanted them to." Power impresses Leroy, but he is also measuring it. He’s testing whether moral authority or brute force defines a “main king,” a tension the pageant resolves by honoring courage over coercion.

"If I was a king, I wouldn’t let some other king push me around." Here, Leroy’s stubborn independence becomes a moral foothold: resisting unjust power. The line foreshadows his final act of giving, a decision that asserts his values without anyone “pushing him around.”