Silent night, hold on tight.
The Best Christmas Pageant Ever (2024)
The Herdman kids are undeniably the worst kids in the history of the world. They lie, steal, cheat, bully and overall terrorize their small community. But this Christmas, they're taking over their local church Pageant – and they just might unwittingly teach a shocked little town the true meaning of Christmas.
rating 7/10 User rating 121 votes 69% ❄ Christmas Connection
The entire film revolves around a small-town church Christmas pageant, the Nativity story, and the way the holiday season forces even its most reluctant participants to reckon with what Christmas actually means.
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Our Review
Barbara Robinson's The Best Christmas Pageant Ever has been a staple of school libraries and church reading lists since 1972. The story of six feral Herdman siblings bulldozing their way into a church Nativity play has sold over 800,000 copies, spawned a 1983 ABC TV movie with Loretta Swit, and been staged by more community theater groups than anyone could count. So when Dallas Jenkins, the creator of The Chosen, announced a theatrical adaptation, the question was straightforward: could a 52-year-old children's book still land in 2024?
The answer is mostly yes.
The Best Christmas Pageant Ever Cast and Story
The setup stays faithful to Robinson's novel. Grace Bradley (Judy Greer) volunteers to direct the annual church Christmas pageant after the usual director breaks her leg. Her daughter Beth (Molly Belle Wright) serves as our eyes into the chaos. Her husband Bob (Pete Holmes) does what sitcom dads do best: stand nearby looking supportive while everything falls apart.
Then the Herdmans show up. All six of them. Imogene (Beatrice Schneider), Ralph (Mason D. Nelligan), Claude (Matthew Lamb), Leroy (Ewan Wood), Ollie (Essek Moore), and Gladys (Kynlee Heiman) are the worst-behaved kids in town. They smoke cigars, steal, lie, and have never set foot in a church. They crash Sunday school for the free snacks and end up cast in every major role of the Nativity.
The town is horrified. Grace is overwhelmed. The audience knows exactly where this is headed. And yet it works.
Dallas Jenkins and the Art of Sincerity
Jenkins made his name with The Chosen, a crowd-funded series about the life of Jesus that became the most-watched faith-based show in streaming history. He brings the same instinct here: lean into the spiritual material without apologizing for it, but don't preach at people either.
The film's smartest move is trusting its child actors. The Herdman kids are genuinely funny, not in a sanitized Disney Channel way, but in a faintly dangerous way that captures what Robinson wrote. Beatrice Schneider's Imogene carries real weight. When she hears the story of Mary for the first time and asks why anyone would put a newborn baby in a feeding trough, her confusion is the emotional center of the movie. These kids have never heard the Christmas story before, and their blunt reactions strip away decades of comfortable familiarity.
Jenkins also shot the film in Winnipeg during actual winter. Principal photography ran from December 6, 2023 through January 27, 2024, with temperatures dropping to minus 40 degrees on the coldest days. You can see it in the actors' breath, the frost on the windows, the ruddy cheeks. It gives the movie a tactile quality that most Christmas films, shot on Los Angeles backlots in July, simply don't have.
What Holds It Back
The film borrows heavily from A Christmas Story's template. Lauren Graham narrates as the adult Beth, providing a warm, wry voiceover that covers roughly 90% of the movie. It's a proven technique, but it keeps the audience at arm's length. We're always being told how things feel rather than being left to feel them ourselves.
Pete Holmes is underused. His Bob Bradley is a pleasant blank, which is a waste of a comedian who can do so much more. Judy Greer fares better because she's given actual conflict to play: a woman who wants to do the right thing but isn't sure what that means when the Herdmans are setting things on fire.
The pacing drags in the middle act. There's a subplot involving the town busybody and a petition to remove the Herdmans that feels like padding. Robinson's novel is only 80 pages. Stretching it to feature length requires some filler, and you can feel the seams.
A Quiet Box Office Win
Despite modest expectations, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever earned over $40 million at the domestic box office on what was reportedly a $10 million budget. Lionsgate moved the release date up a week to November 8 to dodge competition from Red One, and the gamble paid off. For a faith-adjacent family film with no A-list franchise behind it, those numbers are impressive.
The 92% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes didn't hurt either. It's the rare film that Christian audiences and secular critics both found something to like in, which says more about Jenkins' tone management than any marketing strategy.
The Herdmans Win
The movie's final pageant sequence is its best. The Herdmans don't perform the Nativity the way anyone expected. They bring a ham instead of gold. Gladys shoves an angel. Imogene holds the baby Jesus doll like she's protecting it from something real. The scene works because it doesn't turn the Herdmans into model citizens. They're still rough, still loud, still themselves. They just happen to understand something about the story that the polished, rehearsed version had lost.
Robinson knew that the Nativity was originally a story about poverty, displacement, and an unwelcome family finding shelter. The Herdmans don't need that explained to them. They already live it.
Fun Facts
Barbara Robinson first published the story as a short piece in McCall's magazine in 1971 before expanding it into the 1972 novel that sold over 800,000 copies.
The 1983 ABC TV movie adaptation starred Loretta Swit (Hot Lips from M*A*S*H) and a young Fairuza Balk, who would later star in The Craft and Return to Oz.
Dallas Jenkins filmed in Winnipeg, Manitoba during real winter conditions. Producer Kevin Downes said temperatures hit minus 40 degrees on the coldest shoot days.
The film's release date was moved from November 15 to November 8, 2024 to avoid going head-to-head with Dwayne Johnson's big-budget Christmas film Red One.
On a reported budget of roughly $10 million, the film earned over $40 million domestically, making it one of the most profitable Christmas movies of 2024.
Lauren Graham, who narrates as the adult Beth, previously starred in Gilmore Girls, another project built on fast-talking small-town warmth and mother-daughter dynamics.
The exterior church used in filming is the Parish Church of Saint Luke on Nassau Street North in Winnipeg, a Gothic Revival building from the turn of the 20th century. The interior was built entirely as a set.
Cast
