Yuletide miracles abound in The Best Christmas Pageant Ever (now streaming on Starz): It chronicles the unexpected moral turnaround of a pack of unruly children, first chronicled in Barbara Robinson’s beloved 1972 novel. It was a modest under-the-radar hit during the 2024 holiday season, word-of-mouth leading it to a tidy $40 million in ticket sales. And it’s a faith-based movie that asserts its message without being preachy – perhaps its most remarkable achievement. The Chosen creator Dallas Jenkins directs this genuinely funny heartwarmer that’s likely to win you over even if you’re not keen on its brand of sneaky evangelism. Like I said, miracles!
The Gist: It’s blatantly obvious the Herdmans are a bunch of godless heathens. There’s six of them ranging in age from about five to 13 or 14, I’d estimate. They’re a little grubby and they lie and cheat and steal and bully the other kids and smoke cigars and cuss out teachers. “They’re all the same except for the different black-and-blue marks where they had clonked each other,” narrates Beth Bradley. The movie is Beth’s reminiscence of her childhood; her voice belongs to Lauren Graham, but her younger self is played by Molly Belle Wright. Beth would be fine if the Herdmans went away forever, and she’s not at all alone in that sentiment. Everyone in Emmanuel – a city in an unnamed state where it snows, so I’m gonna guess Wisconsin, maybe Pennsylvania – considers the Herdmans a six-headed nuisance, led by the hard-as-nails Imogene (Beatrice Schneider), who forces Beth to hand over her necklace or else, and or else ain’t happening, so say goodbye to your favorite locket, kid. We’ve got ourselves a true reign of terror here.
Judging by the wooden console TV in the Bradley living room and the station wagon out front, I’m gonna guess it’s about 1983. It’s Christmastime, when the whole town gathers in the church for The Emmanuel Annual, the pageant where schoolkids act out the nativity scene. Beth bemoans how prissy little Alice Wendelken (Lorelei Olivia Mote) always plays Mary and the play is always the same thing every year, which is precisely the type of bemoaning that’s heavy with foreshadowing, because the pageant is about to face some serious hardship. See, the ol’ battleaxe who usually directs it falls and breaks both legs, and Beth’s mom, Grace (Judy Greer) volunteers to take the helm. This puts Grace smack in the crosshairs of the judgy moms who want the pageant to strictly adhere to tradition, and carry superiority complexes that are surely masking deep insecurities, so we’ll see who gets the last laugh when it’s time to pay therapy bills and gauge things like inner peace and happiness, right? Right.
And so, Emmanuel’s social hierarchy is as follows: The Herdmans are the Slobs, the Wendelkens and their ilk are the Snobs, and the Bradleys are the Moderates. What with one thing and another, the Herdmans, who never go to church, catch wind that there’s free food there (note: there really isn’t). And before you know it, these ruffians muscle their way into the pageant. Imogene volunteers to play Mary, and her siblings gobble up all the other key roles,j and nobody wants to counter them for fear of being pounded. So Grace is in a bit of a pickle here – one that goes from sour to sweet when she realizes the Herdmans have absentee parents and appear to be economically disadvantaged. And the Herdmans have never even heard the story of Christmas, with the star and the stable and the virgin and the baby and the wise men and the stupidass myrrh, and all that. They’re enraptured by it, thirsty for a little something that everyone else in town seems to take for granted. The Snobs, of course, don’t care about this, and just want these ruffians out of their precious pageant. But Grace? She lends the Herdmans a little something that they never seem to have experienced before – something in her name, perhaps.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Best Christmas Pageant is essentially A Christmas Story (voiceover-nostalgia story structure, meticulous eye for period detail) but with pews and bibles instead of Ovaltine and sexy leg lamps.
Performance Worth Watching: The movie wouldn’t work without a surprisingly soulful performance by Schneider, who tells us the story of the Herdmans’ hardship without saying a word.
Memorable Dialogue: Upon learning that the baby Jesus was swaddled in cloth, Imogen poses some pragmatic questions: “They tied him up and put him in a box? Where was child welfare?”
Sex and Skin: None.
Our Take: Set aside the not-so-sub subtext about converting the heathens to the Greatest Religion In The World, and it’s remarkably easy to be charmed by The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. Jenkins bullseyes the time period (note how the Bradley family doesn’t bother to wear seatbelts in the station wagon) and shows considerable acumen in casting and directing young actors. More importantly, he nurtures a tone that’s illustrative instead of preachy, forgoing the heavy-handed moralizing of many faith-based films. He finds universal themes amidst the specificity of Christianity, and generates laughter and pathos in equal measure. It’s a tightrope walk that he pulls off remarkably well.
Wright and Greer share a few mother-daughter moments that give the story depth and color; it’s absolutely heartwarming to see Beth and Grace grow closer as they learn more about what it means to be truly nonjudgmental, and embrace the Christian spirit of emotional generosity and acceptance. It’s pretty clear that the Snobs aren’t mirroring Jesus’ ideologies with their off-the-cuff rejection – or in the parlance of our time, “othering” – of the Herdmans. It’s also pretty clear that the Herdmans relate to the hardship that Mary, Joseph and Jesus endured, a poignancy that’s not stated outright, but bubbles out of the characterizations and performances. And despite the overarching story of conversion, there’s nuance to it, where both sides of the Herdmans-vs.-Emmanuel conflict quietly realize that softening their tenor opens the door to empathy and mutual understanding.
Our Call: This is a fun, meaningful, warm and hopeful movie, and I can see some of us integrating it into the holiday-movie rotation every year. STREAM IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.