Welcome to a special weekend interview from The World and Everything in it. I'm Lindsay

Mast. We recently had the opportunity to talk with Dallas Jenkins. You may know him as the creator

of The Chosen, the multi-season TV drama about Jesus and his disciples.

But Jenkins' latest project is directing a film version of the best Christmas pageant ever.

It's based on the children's novel of the same name, written by Barbara Robinson more than 50 years ago.

Jenkins says this is a passion project for him. It's something he pursued for years, and that the story holds important lessons about

the true meaning of Christmas.

Today we'll talk with Dallas Jenkins about his personal connection to the story and how

he hopes this film resonates with audiences, especially those who may not be familiar

with the Nativity story. So we won't keep you waiting. Dallas Jenkins, welcome to the program.

Oh, thank you so much for having me.

I'm so glad you've read the book and are as excited as I am to get this movie out there.

Let's start with your own history with the book.

When did you first read it?

The more I've thought about it, I think it's actually closer to 20 years ago.

My wife Amanda brought it home from pottery barn. She was there shopping and saw it on the counter.

I think they were doing a little special board or something. And she's like, oh, yeah, I remember this

book as a kid. And it was a TV movie in the 80s, kind of a short little TV movie. And so we said, oh, let's read it to the kids. And so I was reading it. And

pretty quickly, a couple things started happening. Number one, it's very, very funny. The story is

just brilliantly written by the author Barbara Robinson, who's unfortunately no longer with us.

But so I was already laughing and going, man, this is funny. And then fairly early on, I'm like, this is a Jesus story. And it's a

Jesus story fairly early on. The Herdmans are the worst kids in the history of the world, but they

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