Day 17: Movie Night

Tonight, we did a family movie night.  I had bought a copy of The Nativity Story and wrapped it.  When the boys opened, they were excited.  James kept saying, "this movie is the true story of Christmas." 

This movie is a good hour and forty minutes long and we didn't start it until after 7.  Aaron didn't quite make it as you can tell from the picture.  He fell asleep about 30 minutes into it.  Before he fell asleep he asked me to wake him when Baby Jesus arrives.

He fell asleep holding the angel from the Little People Nativity.  He got up and got the angel after the scene the angel visits Mary to tell her that she would have a baby from God.

Jon & I had never seen this version of the movie.  Its rated PG.  It has a few scenes that some kids might have trouble with including the opening scene where King Herod sends his soldiers through Bethlehem killing all the young male children.  Our kids are really familiar with the details surrounding Jesus' birth, so it wasn't a surprise to them.  However, I think reading that Herod killed the baby & toddler boys and seeing images of Bethlehem being ransacked and baby boys being torn away from their parents is very different.  And in light of the recent shooting in Newtown, it was especially hard for me to watch.  I have a whole new appreciation of the evilness of King Herod now that I'm a mom of lots of young boys.  Thankfully, its a short scene and they don't really show anything.

Another interesting scene for our family to watch was the scene of Elizabeth giving birth to her baby boy (John the Baptist).  Our kids have limited knowledge of childbirth given their young ages.  Also, I delivered all my kids via c-section.  So when I was pregnant with Caleb and the boys wanted to know how the baby got out, I told them that the doctor would take the baby out.  When they asked if he would cut a hole in my stomach to take Baby Pancake out, I said yes.  So, we haven't really discussed exactly how a baby is born naturally and the pain associated with it.  And of course, we couldn't find the remote to fast forward this scene.  We turned the volume down low.  In the scene, Elizabeth is making painful labor noises and she is sort of squatting and holding onto a rope above her head for support.  About ten minutes later, James (our thinker, talker and maker of theories) says "That's pretty interesting.  I had no idea that they had babies by holding on to ropes."  Clearly we are going to need to discuss this a bit further.

When we got to the end of the movie, I tried my best to rouse Aaron from his sleep to see that baby Jesus had indeed arrived and was lying in the manger.  I had no luck.  Instead, we finished the movie and Jon carried Aaron up to bed. 

Since we own this movie, I definitely think we'll watch it each December.