Students get a chance to visit the ‘Nativity’
By TOM GRUBISICH Special to the Daily Press
More than 600 students, faculty and parent chaperones from Saint Monica Catholic High School halted classes Tuesday to walk en masse from their school to a special showing of “The Nativity Story” at the AMC Santa Monica 7 Theater on the Third Street Promenade.
“It’s the biggest field trip in sheer numbers in the school’s history,” said SMCHS Principal Thom Gasper, who conceived the idea for the event.
The theater’s lobby concession stand was mobbed by students clamoring for popcorn and soft drinks before the movie started, creating a long, zigzagging line. But by 10:50 a.m. —– just five minutes behind schedule — the crowd was seated, and the movie underway.
A little more than an hour and a half later, what sounded like a mostly pleased student body was winding its way back through the promenade, across busy Wilshire Avenue and back to the SMCHS campus at Lincoln Boulevard and California Avenue.
“I’d give it four stars out of five,” said junior Cassidy Plair, 16, joining her classmates
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on December 22, 2006. Read the original PDF.