The Nativity Story DVD
With Christmas approaching, Christian families will want to include a reminder of the Christian origins of Christmas somewhere in their celebrations.
To this end, the Christmas nativity story is traditionally retold as part of Christmas activities. Church and other Christian groups will often put on a Christmas pageant or play to portray the story.
A more modern alternative is to sit down and watch a movie telling the Christmas nativity story. This is also a more convenient option for many families.
The 2006 version of The Nativity Story stands out as a well made movie that keeps the traditional story pretty much intact. It stars Keisha Castle-Hughes as Mary and Oscar Isaac as Joseph. The movie covers the full story including the dramatic tension in the background of the attempts by King Herod to find and destroy the baby Jesus, including depicting the massacre of the innocents at Bethlehem that he ordered. The violence in the movie is bloodless and it is rated PG. It is intended for family viewing with parental guidance, though perhaps it is a little frightening in places and so not well suited for very young children.
In addition to showing the DVD to your own family, you might consider it to be a suitable Christmas gift to give to family and friends with whom you would like to share the Christmas story.
Get your copy of The Nativity Story (Click Here).
With Christmas now only a couple of months away, it's that time of year when many church groups plan their Christmas pageant, to tell the Christmas story in a nativity play. One of the most challenging tasks ahead for these good folk will be finding suitable biblical costumes for the characters in their Christmas play. Homemade nativity costumes are popular, but today's families are often too busy for dressmaking and related craft work. With the cost of buying clothing new having fallen in recent years, there are fewer stay at home moms who have kept up the skills, have the sewing machines and who can spare the time. A quick and simple solution to outfitting your Christmas pageant actors is to buy a set of biblical costumes of theatrical quality. The cost is not that great these days, and the costumes can be reused at Easter or other times, and be ready again for the following Christmas. Even if some individual size adjustments are required, the dressmaking work is much less demanding than starting out from scratch to make a new costume.
Good quality costumes are readily available for both children and adult parts, and cover most of the leading characters of the nativity story, particularly Mary, Joseph, shepherds, angels and the Three Wise Men. Costumes for Roman soldiers and other related parts you may include in your play can also be readily obtained, should you want to tell a comprehensive story and involve a larger cast in your performance.
Costume accessories and extras, such as wigs, beards and even a shepherd's crook, are also available with a biblical theme.
Here are some of the most popular biblical costumes that are available:
The Christmas story is most commonly told in a nativity play with children playing the parts of the various characters. Some of the most popular children's nativity costumes are Joseph, Mary, shepherds, the Three Wise Men and angels.
Joseph usually plays an important lead role in a nativity play. This is a children's Joseph costume:
Mary plays a lead alongside Joseph, and some may argue has a more important symbolic role in the Christmas story. Here is a children's costume for Mary:
The shepherds play a supporting role, and there can be several parts to involve more actors. This is a rather attractive children's shepherd costume:
The Three Wise Men are popular nativity play characters. Here are children's versions of costumes for all three:
No nativity play for children would be complete without an angel or two to oversee proceedings, and this children's angel costume serves the purpose perfectly:
Once again Christmas fast approaches, and if have plans to put on a Christmas nativity play you need to give some thought to obtaining a nativity play script and music, arranging nativity play costumes and getting your organizing team together. There is still plenty of time, but you will need to begin your preparations and get your Christmas play cast auditioning and set building under way quite soon.
A quick and low cost way to get your preparation started is to buy a comprehensive nativity script complete with music scores. The Christmas nativity play script we recommend is a well proven 4 act pantomime. The narrator tells the story, while the cast acts out the events portrayed to tell the classic Christmas story in comprehensive detail, to a musical accompaniment.
This approach avoids the complications of having amateur actors learn their lines and perhaps fail to get the Christmas messages across as clearly as you might wish. At the same time it allows less self confident actors to participate without the burden of having to master a lengthy spoken script.
This is an ideal arrangement for involving children in the telling of the Christmas story. They will take great delight in acting out the roles of Mary and Joseph, the shepherds, the Three Wise Men and the other characters in the cast of your Christmas pageant.
Participation is enhanced by the use of popular Christmas carols in the telling of the Christmas story, which enables the audience to join in as well.
All in all, the package you receive will save you a great deal of time, and help ensure the success of your nativity play production. In addition to the script, there is comprehensive sheet music and lyrics for guitar or piano, set design, costume, production and rehearsal notes. Important and helpful issues you might have overlooked are also included, such as permission letters and promotion posters and flyers.
Click here to find out more about this nativity play script.
