Nativity (film series)

The Nativity film series is a British trilogy of family Christmas films

Paul Maddens is teacher who once had ambitions of being successful as an actor, producer or director. Every year St Bernadette's Catholic school in Coventry, where he teaches, competes with a local Protestant private school (Oakmoor) to see who can produce the best nativity play. Paul hates Christmas because his ex-girlfriend Jennifer Lore,who attended drama school with him, left him at Christmas before he could propose to her. Despite this, the St Bernadette's headteacher Mrs Bevans tasks him with running their nativity play this year, and gives him a new class teaching assistant called Mr Poppy, who turns out to be as much of a child as the rest of Paul's class. As every year, it is one of Paul's other friends from drama school, Gordon Shakespeare, who runs the nativity plays at rival school Oakmoor. Determined not to be seen as a failure by his old rival, Paul lies to Shakespeare about how a Hollywood producer—their old friend Jennifer—will be turning his production into a Hollywood film, though he hasn't even spoken to her in five years. Mr Poppy accidentally overhears this and is so excited that he has to spread the rumour. Soon Paul finds his lie is out of control, and all he can do is go along with it as media attention mounts and the children get more and more excited, so Paul has to try to get Hollywood turn their production to a film.

Donald Peterson is an anxious teacher who has just moved to a new house with his pregnant wife Sarah. He accepts a teaching job at St. Bernadette's primary school, taking over the class formerly taught by Mr. Maddens, who by this point has left for America. In the interim, the enthusiastic and childlike teaching assistant Mr. Poppy has been teaching the class unaided.

The class wants to enter in a competition called "A Song for Christmas", in which each school produces a Christmas song, with the winning song earning its school £10,000 and the chance at being a Christmas #1. However, headteacher Mrs. Bevan refuses the class permission to enter without a qualified teacher, and worries that Mr. Poppy's behaviour is so inappropriate that no teacher will stay in the job.