Christmas - The First Magic
Constance Ash December 4th, 2006
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A Christmas Card to Deep Genre.Â
The consensus reviews of the movie, The Nativity Story, are so respectful, almost comic textbook examples of damning with faint praise: “competently dull tale of adolescent dilemmas.”
I’ll probably not see the movie, having seen — and acted in — so many dramatizations already in my earlier life. Twice I was even the Virgin ….  Anyway, I know how the story turns out: with wars of religion.
But the Nativity was my first arc tale, and from the beginning I loved it with all my heart. My favorite parts were the Angels bringing the news to the Shepherds, the stable and animals, and the Three Wise Men adamantly following their astrological guide — or the Three Kings, if you are from a Mediterrean heritage.