Jesus Christ is Born in Texas

Brendan Fitzgerald
Tue, 02 Dec 2025 11:45:00 +0000
Editor's Pick, Chandler Fritz, Christianity, Christmas, County Highway, pageant, Texas, theater

"70,000 believers arrive at the Prestonwood Baptist Church in Dallas to witness America’s greatest Christmas pageant."

Chandler Fritz confesses his first journalistic mistake 11,000 words into his account of the Prestonwood Baptist Church’s multi-million-dollar Christmas pageant in Dallas: “I got comfortable.” The second mistake comes moments later, when he becomes part of the story, donning his “biblicals” and waving candles at zebras during what a media director calls “the largest scale and most technologically advanced show that goes on, certainly during Christmas, maybe ever.” I loved Fritz’s “The Man in the New Boots,” about his decision to ride a bull. This is a different animal entirely: a sprawling, detailed portrayal of an epic event, featuring a sound team from Slayer tours, a llama in heat, a history of Baptists in Texas, and ultimately—finally!—a consideration of goodness beyond faith’s limit.

I knew the Gift of Christmas would be a good story. It had everything one might want from an American tale: vanity and excess and ironic juxtaposition, but also zealotry and innocence and unspoiled idealism. Many excellent magazine features begin with a writer trespassing on some unsuspecting utopia, and as Americans — as a people who have inherited so many failed utopias — we derive masochistic pleasure in witnessing a writer unravel a false paradise by turning a mirror upon his subject. It’s the great illusion — and for someone like me, temptation — of this work. Hold the mirror just so, and the world will see the subject as you do.?

I called Prestonwood in early September of last year, told them I was a music critic interested in reviewing their show, and asked if they would let me interview some of the key players to give the piece some color. I was not duplicitous. They had the internet. An operation at the scale of Prestonwood — and on this point I have not been exaggerating for effect; ask any evangelical leader, this is a very powerful institution — has ample resources to defend itself against journalists like me. I would not be exploiting generosity. I’d only be penetrating an institution’s lazy sense of invincibility to cut it down to size.

Everything went according to plan, at first. I arrived at Prestonwood on a pleasant Monday afternoon in early December and immediately found myself in friendly company. Larry, the orchestra conductor and my initial point of contact, had told me over the phone that the first thing I’d need to do when I arrived was sit down with the church’s legal department to sign some paperwork about my coverage. Yet, when we met in his office for the first time, he instead shuttled me around so I could get a number of hour-long interviews with cast members before rehearsals began in earnest, apparently forgetting the paperwork. I, in turn, forgot to remind him.