In spite of a cumbersome title, The First Christmas: The Story of the First Christmas Snow is a simply told 22-minutes with an above-average soundtrack, narrated by the late great Angela Lansbury.
Sister Theresa (Lansbury) lives in an abbey near the sea where it never snows. While she and her fellow nuns are making Christmas cards, a young shepherd boy, Lukas, gets zonked in the noggin by lightning. They bring him into their abbey to recuperate and discover that the accident left him blind. To comfort him, Sister Theresa tells the boy of her childhood in the mountains where it snowed every Christmas. Lukas, an orphan, has never seen snow.
He grows attached to Sister Theresa and wants to stay with her. Unfortunately, crab-ass Father Thomas (Cyril Ritchard) wants to kick Lukas out faster than you can say “there’s no room at the inn.” Sister Theresa convinces him to let Lukas stay until Christmas. While the other children prepare for the abbey’s Nativity pageant, Lukas dreams of staying with Sister Theresa and seeing his first white Christmas.
A little too ooey-gooey in places and so sweet that the film will rot every tooth from your head. Still, Christmas is the time for dental decay. The story unfolds with kindness and affectionate, and the voice acting, especially from the child actors, is honest. Produced by Rankin/Bass, this is one of their most beautifully designed Christmas specials. Christmas cards are a recurring image in the story and the movie itself looks like one come to life. The musical score is surprisingly snappy. Lansbury’s magnificent rendition of Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas” is grossly underrated.
Perhaps the most forgotten Rankin/Bass movie (they also made Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman, among many others). The First Christmas aires infrequently on AMC nowadays, but once was the final Rankin/Bass special to air during the holiday season, back when CBS held the broadcast rights. The film moves at a clip and the musical score provides some alleviation to the syrupy sections. But any 22 minute film with Angela Lansbury singing and narrating is well worth your time to check out this year and every year.
-T.Z.
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