Both charming and cinematically well produced, the new adaptation of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever is still a missed opportunity.
I was excited when I saw the trailers for The Chosen Director Dallas Jenkins’ adaptation of Barbara Robinson’s Christmas classic for children, hoping that it would live up to both the book and 1983 film adaptation. Jenkins clearly appreciates the original source material, but the film deviates from it in two significant ways. It presents an overly harsh depiction of average church attendees, and it subtly presents a more therapeutic version of the gospel.
It is the story of the Herdmans, “the worst kids in the whole world.” Their nastiness and desire for free desserts leads them to become involved with a local church’s annual Christmas pageant, and everyone thinks it will end in disaster. Instead, the Herdmans are transformed by their encounter with the Christmas story, and they enable the people around them to re-encounter the nativity. The main character and narrator, a girl named Beth, is the same age as the oldest Herdman child, Imogene. Beth’s mother Grace ends up having to direct the pageant after its longstanding director ends up in the hospital. Despite the concerns of everyone at the church, she decides to let the Herdmans stay in the pageant.
While the new adaptation keeps the main story, it is clear that Jenkins felt the need to expand the story to fit a normal runtime and to exaggerate certain elements. As a result, the concerns of the people at the church are morphed into a general meanness. So mean, it seems odd that Grace’s family would continue to attend this church. Afterall, it is clear the congregants don’t like Grace (a heavy-handed metaphor), and she doesn’t seem to like them either.
The women are no longer just busybodies with concerns about the Hermans, some of which are justified; after all, we are told that the Herdmans “lie, and steal, and smoke cigars, even the girls.” The Herdmans also set fire to buildings, blackmail the other children, and regularly beat and hurt them. The original story wants us to understand that despite this, the Hermans still need the opportunity to encounter Christ.
The new adaptation presents an exaggerated depiction of the women: one in a hushed tone tells Imogene that she will never be good enough to portray Mary. The filmmakers simultaneously affirm the worst stereotypes about the church while inviting people to come. This has become popular in contemporary evangelism, separating the church from Christ. But if we want people to be discipled, we can’t invite them into a relationship with Christ while asking them to be ambivalent toward His body.
While the church ladies are unsympathetic, another subtle but important change is the backstory of the Herdmans. In the original story, the Herdmans are mean and bully the other students. The movie feels that it needs to make them more sympathetic, over exaggerating difficult elements of their homelife, and turns them into children who have to be tough because they don’t think people will care for them. The pageant is an opportunity, as Imogene explains, to be someone different, like in the movies they enjoy. By focusing on making the Herdmans more sympathetic and the church ladies detestable, the movie misses its own point.
Grace reminds her daughter that, “Jesus came for the Herdmans.” This is true, but He also came for the Herdmans of the original tale, unsympathetic as they may be, and for the church ladies. We should want all people to be saved, not just those for whom we feel sympathy. We pray that Jesus would lead “all souls to heaven, especially those most in need of thy mercy.”
And the gospel offers more than the opportunity to “be someone else.” It is not mere escapism. In the original story, the Herdmans, bullies that they are, cannot fathom the humility of Christ at Christmas. Christ is Lord, who, “did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage.” All of their questions about the nativity story, all the “whys” focus on their incredulity that Christ would act in this way. They are mesmerized by the story, and it changes them from selfish bullies into people that give away the ham from their welfare basket and weep as they look at the Christ child. As a credit to Jenkins, the scene depicting the play taking place is excellent and captures some of these most memorable moments of the original.
Jenkins had good intentions when making this film, and it is easy to see why Christians would want to praise it, but we should have higher standards for Christian films. After all, as all three adaptations remind us, there are many people who have never heard the story of Christ, and we should want to tell it well. It is our opportunity to join with Gladys Herdman to say to children, busybody church ladies, and everyone in between, “Hey, unto you a child is born.”
Comment by John on December 10, 2024 at 10:47 am
I haven’t seen the movie yet, so I’ll withhold my judgement til then. I think you missed an important element of the original story though. Yes, the Herdsmans are portrayed as what we imagine the worst kids in the world would be like, though the book does hint their misbehavior is a result of rough homelife and generational poverty. But if you think the church folk are all portrayed as tender-hearted saints who boldly open up their doors to these troubled young kids, you may want to look more closely. Helen Armstrong, who Grace replaces as director of the Christmas Pageant is shocked to learn the church would even let the Herdsmans through the door and is more obsessed with everything going perfectly during the show than whether the children actually learn anything from the experience. The narrator’s friend Alice personifies the spirit of self-righteousness and superiority the congregants feel toward the Herdsmans. While she can quote lines from Isaiah by memory, she also thinks she was chosen by God to play the Virgin Mary and follows the Herdsmans around with a notepad, marking down every indiscetion like an overactive hall-monitor. These two are like the Pharisees in the Gospel, feeling secure in their own righteousness and using the Herdsmans, rather than Jesus, as their measuring stick for their own behavior. I wonder if you also considered the possible symbolism of the name “Herdsmans”. It’s possible they are meant to represent the shepherds in the Nativity, who like these children were dirty, uncouth, and the last people you would expect to be present at the birth of the Messiah.
Comment by James Hargett on December 14, 2024 at 5:22 am
Thank you, Sarah, for this. Yes, ‘Artistic License’ in even the seemingly most well-intentioned movies and video today goes too far and delimits the essence of Christ Jesus’, “Go you into all the world” gospel. Exaggeration by movie producers to tantalize and incentivize attendance and yet denigrate the essence of profound truth is painful.
Comment by Tim Ware on December 14, 2024 at 10:44 pm
I wonder about the comment about shepherds being dirty and uncouth. I wonder what the actual historical basis for that is, or is it just sonething that got started and gets repeated. Were sheoherds dirty, uncouth, and at the bottom of society? Can we prove that by the historical record…or do we prove it just by what soneone has said and that we accept as fact?
Comment by Wilson R. on December 16, 2024 at 1:04 pm
@ Tim Ware:
According to two scholars I consulted on an Advent devotional book projects, shepherds were not regarded as the bottom of society (in contrast with what I had always casually heard). Their profession was humble, and their place within their society was modest but not disreputable. David, after all, had been a shepherd, and the patriarchs all had flocks of sheep, and of course Jesus compares himself to a shepherd. That shepherds were not at the bottom, nor bullies like the kids depicted in the movie, does not make it any less striking to me that God chose to announce the birth of the messiah not at the Temple or other seat of religious authority but to these lowly folks who in their own way become the first evangelists.