Neighborhood Nativity

 One of the most innovative things we have done during the pandemic is re-imagining our Christmas live nativity. In years past one event or another on a Sunday evening in Advent has concluded with an an outdoor live nativity scene. We cast it this year as a stand-alone event off campus. We adapted our perennial children's Christmas Eve service to provide a script, recording children we might normally use in a live setting. We recorded the same sequence of songs in that service with a solo child singer, in lieu of congregational songs. Instead of a single locale, we created 5 locations among our in-town church families. We recruited those same families, or in a couple of cases some non-family members to portray characters from the nativity story. We created a CD of the narration, songs, and some other brief liturgical elements. We created scenes at the five homes, including costumes and props. Folks picked up a CD from the church facility and then drove around town on a prescribed route to view the scenes while listening to the narration and songs in their cars. We had about 100 cars over the 2-hour course of the event. The response was quite favorable. Below are some shots.

The first stop was "the innkeeper and Mary and Joseph."

 Next up was the angels...

Next up were the shepherds in afield. We hired live animals for this stop.

The magi were next. We purchased inflatable camel costumes for this trio of boys and simply told them to have a good time.

The last stop was a complete scene. We asked a large family in our congregation to take this on, figuring they would have the personnel to cast a fairly complete scene. They did! We had planned to let them borrow our scale-model creche scene, but the kids wanted to create their own, including animals, fake and living!

There are years I seek to provide a certain level of authenticity to the live nativity scene, and ask persons to remain in character. Since our congregation had been apart for 9 months at this point, we let those strictures fall, and encouraged everyone to wave and smile and chat with one another from a distance, the better to enjoy the experience. It was a wonderful event. We liked being in the community, and even when we are able to be back together, we may re-cast this yet again and make it bigger and better.