A Plano Church Gets Roasted for Its Really Extra Christmas Show

Church events seem to have morphed from simple gatherings of celebrated traditions into pageants and productions with bigger budgets than a Disney on Ice show.

Church is no longer just a simple affair where the clergyperson of your religious persuasion simply tells cautionary morality tales or reads scripture appropriate for the season. Some megachurches put on productions with more lighting cues and special effects than a Super Bowl halftime show.

One of the most mega of the local megachurches is Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, a 140-acre church complex with a 7,000-seat worship center, according to the multimedia company Paragon360, which installed the tech for the facility.

Every year during the holidays, the Plano megachurch puts on a Christmas worship spectacle called The Gift of Christmas in early December. Videos of the megachurch's mega-Christmas event have been circulating on social media for the last couple of days.  Now, we're not questioning anyone's religious choices or the way they choose to worship. If your faith calls for having a Vegas-style production on Sundays, then that's your choice to make as long as it doesn't interfere with anyone else's freedoms.

But listen, nothing can match the Vegas-ness of this annual holiday pageant. "Over the top" is usually just an expression, but in this case, it's an accurate description. Some of the performers literally go over the top of the heads of the people in the audience.

The Gift of Christmas tells the familiar story of the birth of Jesus, but in ways that the actual Jesus never had the budget to pull off in his lifetime. 

The show starts with shepherds watching over their sheep by night with actual sheep walking across the stage. They are paired with video imagery of sheep walking across the fields. The stage explodes with light as a flock of flying angels hovers over the crowd to deliver the news of Christ's birth. It's a veritable Cirque-du-Holiness. 
As nearly 1,000 performers flood the stage, three live camels are led down the aisle to the main event. Some of the wardrobe choices are real head scratchers, such as the two performers in front wearing what appear to be ballroom dresses made of hay or straw. There may be some religious scripture or dogma that refers to these two characters in the Christmas story but from here, it just looks like it came from the costumer who worked on an off-Broadway production of Jesus Goes Hawaiian.

Also something to keep in mind: this is just 20 minutes from a 100-minute production. If this is the first 20 minutes, what else goes on in this hour-and-40-minute production? Things are so big and flashy that there are not many places left for the production to go. Does the baby who plays Jesus have an aerial number? Did they teach the camels to sing carols?

The internet, in its infinite wisdom, had various reactions to videos of the church service. @TLFrankKing on Twitter asked an important question about the show's wardrobe and makeup budget. 

Is that dude wearing fake Jesus hair and beard or is that his real Jesus hair and beard?

— The Legendary Frank King (@TLFrankKing) November 28, 2022

@CooperEarlJones came up with a more appropriate name for a church service that evokes high wire aerials in its sermons.

Flighteous Gemstones

— Yeah, cheer we go! (@CooperEarlJones) November 28, 2022

@thebuffaloroamz made a good point about feelings of loneliness that usually crop up during this time of year and a reason why we might be feeling that way during the holidays. 

This is why 👽 don’t speak to us

— Christopher Bufkin 🦬 (@thebuffaloroamz) November 28, 2022

@Mark_AnthonyTX points out something that the church clearly forgot when it was maxing out its lighting and live animal wrangling budget for its Christmas pageant. 

This church failed to ask themselves one question.

What would Jesus do?

— Anthony (@Mark_AnthonyTx) November 27, 2022