In November 2024 Lionsgate released a Christmas movie named The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. It is based on a children’s novel by Barbara Robinson, published in 1972. The book was also adapted into a TV movie in 1983. Both movies and the book tell a great story about the real meaning of Christmas as the feast of Christ’s birth.
The Best Christmas Pageant Ever stars Beth Bradley, a girl who is preparing for her part as a choir member in her church’s annual Christmas pageant. Beth is played by Molly Belle Wright in the 2024 movie, and Fairuza Balk in the TV movie. (Balk would later make her breakthrough as an actress in 1985 when she starred as Dorothy in Return to Oz). Beth is not looking forward for the Christmas pageant. She finds it boring and she is always assigned to be in the choir to sing the Christmas carols. Beth’s friend Alice (Lorelei Olivia Mote in the movie and Ocean Hellman in the TV version), who knows the Christmas Gospel of St. Luke by heart, is excited, though, because she always gets to plays Mary in the pageant.
But this year the things are different. The church’s Sunday School teacher breaks her leg and the substitute is Beth’s mother Grace (Judy Greer in the movie and Loretta Swit in the TV version). But what makes this year truly remarkable is that new children show up for the pageant. They are the Herdmans, the worst kids of the town. The Herdmans are notorious for causing trouble and bullying kids in school, and Beth, too, is scared of them.
The Herdmans go to Sunday school for the first time after being told that the church offers desserts. There they learn about the upcoming Christmas pageant. The pack leader Imogene Herdman (Beatrice Schneider in the movie and Megan Hunt in the TV movie) makes up her mind that this year she, instead of Alice, will play Mary in the pageant. Imogene also tells her brothers to be in the play, too.
In both movies Beth is the main character and the narrator. She tells how everyone in her town (Emmanuel in the movie, but unnamed in the book and the TV movie) dislikes the Herdmans, who smoke cigars, commit arson, and are regularly screened by the child welfare. Their father left after the birth of the youngest child Gladys, and the mother works to make ends meet, and leaves the children to take care of themselves.
But a Christmas miracle takes place. Though Imogene first wants to play Mary simply to get herself on stage, she has a real-life conversion, in the manner of St. Genesius of Rome. Grace’s patient explaining of the Gospel, and how big sacrifices Mary and Joseph had to make so that Jesus could be born as our Savior, softens Imogene’s heart when the pageant begins. On stage she becomes sweet and caring, like the real Mary.
The TV movie is merely 50 minutes long, while the feature film is 100 minutes. The great difference between them is, that being twice as long in length, the feature film is able to do much more character development with Beth and Imogene than the TV version. The feature film presents Beth praying many times, while this characteristic is absent in the TV movie. In the feature film Imogene is shown struggling between her sweet and mean character, and Beth actively helps her to come up with her sweet side. This does make Imogene’s character much more dimensional – and Beatrice Schneider makes fine job in her role – but it also makes her Marian conversion at the end much less impressive than in the TV version. Megan Hunt’s Imogene is evil all the way through, but when she at the start of the pageant beholds the image of Mary and the Child, she is changed into a sweet and sensitive girl, like Mary.
So though I actually like some of the characteristics of the feature film even more than of the 1983 TV version, altogether it was not as good. It almost seems that the producers of the feature film tried to make Alice the bad guy instead of Imogene. Also one nice touch in the TV movie is that Mrs. Herdman shows up to watch her children in the Christmas pageant, a scene which is missing both in the feature film and in the book.
The 1983 version of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever is available on YouTube. It can also be downloaded for free on Internet Archive. The original book of Barbara Robinson can be listened on YouTube and purchased on Amazon.
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