The Christmas Shoes

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The Christmas Shoes
Directed by	Andy Wolk
Produced by	Michael Mahoney

The Christmas Shoes is a Christmas-themed story, song, novel, film, and play.

Originally an Internet-forwarded legend, it was forwarded to a member of the Christian vocal group NewSong in 1996. They worked on the song for four years and eventually released it as a bonus track in 2000; it reached #31 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart that year. A year later, all-female group 3 of Hearts released their own version, which peaked at #37. In Tom Reynolds 2006 book I Hate Myself and Want to Die: The 52 Most Depressing Songs You've Ever Heard, he names "The Christmas Shoes" as the most depressing song in modern recorded music history. In 2002 Donna VanLiere took the story and the theme of the song and produced a novelization which was published in 2002 by St. Martin's Press. The book became a made-for-TV movie released in December 2002.

[edit] Plot summary

The plot interweaves two different stories.

In the first, a young music teacher, Maggie Andrews, begins dying of ovarian cancer, and her son Nathan tries to get a pair of Christmas shoes for her before she dies.

In the second, lawyer Robert Layton and his wife Kate are slowly drifting apart. The matter comes to a head during Christmas, when Kate takes over for Maggie for the school choir and declines a job in Robert's firm.

When Robert's mother passes away, he begins to reconsider things. His and Nathan's paths cross on Christmas Eve, as Nathan tries to raise the money for the shoes and Robert tries to get a present for his daughter.