TV Special Unverified

The First Christmas: The Story of the First Christmas Snow

Year
1975
Network
NBC

About this tv special

Rankin/Bass stop-motion special about a blind shepherd boy and the first Christmas snowfall.

Plot summary

A few weeks before Christmas, a young shepherd named Lucas is struck by lightning while wandering the countryside with his animals, a herd of sheep and a dog named Waggles. A group of kindly nuns named Sister Theresa (the narrator), Sister Jean, and Sister Catherine rescue him, taking him to their abbey nearby and decided to take him in. Soon, they and the priest, Father Thomas, learn that he was not only been blinded by the accident, but he is also an orphan as well. Father Thomas is slightly irritated, but nevertheless, Lucas is allowed to stay at the abbey while he recovers from the accident, and Sister Theresa becomes a mentor & mother-figure to him. She tells him about snow, something neither he nor anyone else at the abbey has ever seen (the village is "much too close to the sea"). He is fascinated and begins to dream of a "white Christmas".

Later on, Father Thomas tells Sister Theresa of his plans to send Lucas to an orphanage after Christmas. Lucas overhears this and is heartbroken. In the meantime, he gets to play an angel in the abbey's Christmas pageant with some other children from the village. There, he meets a girl named Louisa, another one of the angels who immediately befriends him. He shares his dream of seeing snow for the first time with her and they start to develop feelings for each other.

From the Wikipedia article “The First Christmas: The Story of the First Christmas Snow”, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Continue reading on Wikipedia

Details

Holiday
Christmas
Archive type
TV Special
Franchise
Rankin/Bass
Studio
Rankin/Bass

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