The Best Christmas Pageant Ever: A Biblical Worldview Evaluation for Parents and Kids

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Is The Best Christmas Pageant Ever a good choice for family movie night? In this episode, Elizabeth Urbanowicz reviews this new release, offering guidance for parents on whether it’s appropriate for kids and how to make it meaningful. Explore thought-provoking discussion questions that connect the film’s themes to the gospel and discover ways your family can embody the true meaning of Christmas by reaching out to those in need.

Transcript

Note: The following is an auto-transcript of the podcast recording.

Hello friends. Today on the Foundation Worldview Podcast, we're going to be talking about the movie, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. We're going to be talking through my recommendation of whether or not you should take your kids to see it, as well as some questions you can talk through with your children if you do decide to take them to see it. So this is a little bit out of the box on the Foundation Worldview Podcast where typically we're answering your questions so that you can equip the children that God has placed in your care to carefully evaluate every idea they encounter and understand the truth of the biblical worldview. I'm your host, Elizabeth Urbanowicz, and I'm thrilled that you've joined me for this episode today.

Now, those of you who are familiar with the storyline of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, you probably know that this is not only a movie, it's a book, and now if you have never read through The Best Christmas Pageant Ever with your children, I highly recommend that you get a copy of the book, read through it with your children. It is just a wonderful story. When I was a teacher, I would frequently read through this story with my students around Christmas time. Now, the movie that was just released this year in 2024 is an incredibly well done. Now, as I've said on previous podcasts where I've given advice about movies is that I will never encourage you to take your child to see a certain movie because that is a personal decision that you have to make as to whether or not the content is appropriate for your child, whether or not your child is ready for it. However, I'm not saying that you should take your child, but I want you to know that if I were a parent, if I had children, I would feel comfortable taking my children ages seven and up to see this movie. In fact, I would feel comfortable even taking a four-year-old to see this movie. However, because it is an hour and a half long and it's not incredibly action packed, I think it might be a little bit difficult for a child under the age of seven to sit through it. So when I went and saw the movie, I thought it was incredibly well done. It is one that I will probably be purchasing and watching every Christmas from here on out. So if you decide to take your child to see this movie, what we're going to talk through now are some questions you can talk through after to really make sure that this is a meaningful time for your child, that they don't just watch the movie and be entertained, which isn't a bad thing. It's good to go and be entertained, but that they're actually thinking critically through the content of this movie.

So if you take your child to go see this movie, I think that there are a few different questions you can engage with them in. First, I would just ask some fun questions. What did you enjoy most about this movie? Which character did you think was most interesting? Or if you were a character in the movie, which character would you want to be? Or what did you think was the funniest prank or trouble that the Herdmans got into? Just some fun icebreaker questions. Then to dive into some more serious questions, I recommend asking how did the members of the church treat the Herdmans and talk through how the adults and the children in the church really treated the Herdmans kind of rudely. That their goal throughout most of the movie was to get them kicked out of the Christmas pageant so that they could kind of just return to the quiet, peaceful traditions that they normally held every Christmas.

Another great question that I think you can ask your child is, did this treatment line up with how God has called us to treat others? So did the way that these church members treated the Herdman children, did it line up with how God calls us to treat others? And then talk about how the answer to that question is no, that the way that the church members were treating the Herdman with just wanting to kick them out, it did not line up with God calling us to love others, that Jesus came for everyone, and that's what we're reminded of at Christmas time, that we are all broken and the church members' treatment of the Herdman did not line up with this truth. That they had this idea that they just wanted their Christmas pageant to be beautiful and serene and peaceful and give them warm feelings rather than focusing on the truth that Jesus came for all of us in our brokenness. If you are not familiar with the song, Oh, Come All You Unfaithful by Sovereign Grace, highly recommend that you check out that song that can be a great song to play with your children and to talk through the lyrics. That it opens up by saying, "Oh, come all you unfaithful, come broken and unstable. Come see what our God has done." And then it talks about how Christ is born. Christ is born. Christ is born for you, and we want our children to understand that the way that the church members in this movie treated the Herman's did not show them the truth of the story of Christmas.

Then another question that you can ask your children is what did the Hermans learn through being in the pageant That there was lots of misadventures as the Herdmans are in this Christmas pageant, but talk through how ultimately the Herdmans learned that Jesus came for them, in all of their arguments and dirtiness and brokenness and filth. Jesus came for them, and that's what we want to help our children see that Jesus has come for all of us.

Another question to talk through with your children is what did the church members learn through having the herdman in the pageant? And you can talk about how as the church members watch the pageant, they realized that Christmas isn't about shiny lights and warm feelings. It's about Jesus entering into our sin and shame and the brokenness of our world, and you can talk through that moment in the pageant when the camera panned to all of the different faces and people started to realize as they're watching the Herdmans play, the different characters in the story that they're realizing, oh, this is why Jesus came. He came because of our brokenness. He came because of our sin. He came to redeem us and rescue us out of this mess, and this movie does such a great job portraying that truth.

Then finally, the last question I would recommend that you talk through with your children is one that is personal to your family is what can we do this Christmas to reach out to those who need Jesus? So talk through who are people in your community that need Jesus, that need helping hand that you can reach out to so that this Christmas you're not just focused on shiny lights and buying presents. Not that those are bad things, but those are not ultimately what Christmas is all about.

As I was preparing notes for this podcast, I was just thinking through some of the things that my parents did with our family when we were growing up to help us reach out to the lost at Christmas and most years when I was growing up, we participated in Angel Tree and in our city that was buying Christmas presents for children of parents who were incarcerated. And so we would choose a few angels off the tree and we would both go and buy the clothing and the presents, and then some years we would even deliver those presents. We would go out and deliver those presents to those in our community that they were going to. We would also participate in Operation Christmas Child. Those are the shoe boxes that you fill up and you deliver to Samaritan's Purse that they deliver all across the world. Now, I think by the time this podcast released Operation Christmas Child shoe boxes will have already been collected for this year, but that's something you can put on your calendar to do for next year. I know another thing that my parents did with us when we were pretty young, we would go on Christmas morning and we would actually serve a meal at a homeless shelter with other people from our church. We did that for a few years and then after that, a tradition that my parents started that we still do actually to this day when me and my brother and his family or my sister and her family are at home, is we will go caroling on Christmas Eve at a state funded nursing home. And so this is different than a private nursing home where people are paying a lot of money to be there. A state funded one is usually for people that do not have the resources to be in another nursing home. And to be quite honest, it's really depressing being there because the conditions are not good, but our parents chose to do this to show us that Jesus came for the lost, including us, including everyone, and so I think that can be a great way to wrap up your engagement with this movie is talking through what can you do as a family to reach out those in your community who need Jesus?

As I mentioned at the beginning of this episode, that deciding to go to a movie is a personal decision. You need to make that decision of whether or not this content is appropriate for your child. But if you do take your child to this film, I think it can be a great way to talk through the true meaning of Christmas and to think creatively how you can invest in this Christmas season in those who need the news of our savior in your community.

Well, that's a wrap for this episode. If you found the content of this podcast beneficial, please invest a few seconds that it takes to like and subscribe, write a review, all of those things. Also, if you have a question that you would like for me to answer on a future Foundation Worldview podcast, you can submit that question by going to FoundationWorldview.com/podcast. As we leave our time together, my prayer for you is that no matter the situation in which you and the children God has placed in your care find yourselves, that you would trust that God is working all things together for your good by using all things to conform you more in the image of His son. I'll see you next time.