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Editor's note: "Through a Screen Darkly," a monthly commentary by CT Movies critic Jeffrey Overstreet,explores films old and new, as well as relevant themes and trends in cinema. The column continues the journey begun in Overstreet's book of the same name.

As a kid, I looked forward to Christmas movies and television programs as much as most people look forward to the holiday parties, cookies, or the stuff in their stockings.

'A Charlie Brown Christmas'

I particularly liked the whimsical animated programs like The Year Without a Santa Claus (with its frightful Heat Miser) and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (with its fearsome Abominable Snowman). The family all gathered around for that Muppet Christmas special with John Denver, and we never missed A Charlie Brown Christmas. That crazy cartoon still brings tears of joy to my eyes.

There were movies too, but they were on too late and I wasn't allowed to stay up to see how they ended. So, for The Sound of Music, I didn't learn about Liesl's Nazi boyfriend or the family's frantic escape until I was a teenager. But the sound of Julie Andrews singing "My Favorite Things" became as familiar as any Christmas carol. Other movies that often aired during the holidays included The Ten Commandments, It's a Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th Street, and every so often, a new version of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol.

But as years went by, I became more and more puzzled about the absence of the Nativity story. Only two TV programs—The Little Drummer Boy and A Charlie Brown Christmas—bothered to acknowledge the baby born in the manger. There were no movies about it. What was the problem? Weren't the marvels, the mayhem, and the miracle of that "midnight clear" a fantastic subject for a Christmas movie?

Every December brings some new candidate to join the canon of Christmas classics.

Do The Santa Clause and its sequels or The Polar Express qualify? How about this year's zany comedy Four Christmases or Nothing Like the Holidays?

But most of these movies avoid any mention of the Nativity. If they do acknowledge the Incarnation, they treat it like just another cultural tradition or fairy tale. And they conclude by emphasizing something that vaguely resembles faith. "One thing about trains," says the conductor of The Polar Express (played by Tom Hanks). "It doesn't matter where they're going. What matters is deciding to get on." I answered that in my original review: "It does matter which train we climb aboard, which dream we adhere to, and what we choose to believe in."

Don't waste my time with simple platitudes about believing in myself. Give me images and stories of substantial hope—not wish-fulfillment images of Hallmark card coziness. Remind me of the power that inspires the children in A Charlie Brown Christmas, the story of a loving God who humbles himself to be born among livestock. When they hear that, they burst into song. We have too many Christmas movies that are merely "pretty" or sentimental—they get me thinking about earthly comforts rather than the fierce redemptive power of the Incarnation, the scandal of Christmas that shines in the darkness. If you'll excuse the battered expression, keep the Christ in Christmas.

Some of the films that have best captured the redemptive truth of Christmas are PG-13 or even R-rated for their startling and horrifying content—like Scripture's own versions of the Christmas story. But ironically, the film with the title you'd think might best depict that narrative—The Nativity Story—actually falls short.

This 'Nativity' failed to inspire

Two years ago, the movie I'd hoped to see since childhood, finally arrived: The Nativity Story. So why wasn't I moved and inspired? Why, when I ask my Christian friends about their favorite Christmas movies, does The Nativity Story never earn a mention?

I think it has something to do with Roger Ebert's mantra: "A movie is not about what it is about. It is about how it is about it."

I was impressed with the naturalistic details and the earnest attempt to make the Christmas story look real. But as the artist Georgia O'Keeffe once said, "Nothing is less real than realism. Details are confusing. It is only by selection, by elimination, by emphasis, that we get at the real meaning of things." The Nativity Story, rated PG and directed by Catherine Hardwicke, failed to inspire much of a sense of awe in the appearance of the angel, in the night of Christ's birth, or in the narrow escapes from the wicked king's soldiers.

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