Tonight, most Christian churches will be conducting services recognizing Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem. The congregations will sing the traditional carols such as “Silent Night,” “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” and “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear.”
It’s a story that endures through the centuries. Here in Durand, St. Mary’s parish youth presented the Live Nativity Sunday. December 7, at 1 p.m. in the courtyard at Medina.
When our three kids were Sunday school age, the children re-enacted the manger scene in a program in front of the congregation. Bathrobes and towels garbed the boys. The girl who played Mary wore a long dress.
Today, Christian churches don’t have the large membership that made them thrive during the sixties, seventies, eighties and nineties. At that time, babies were baptized, older children attended Sunday school and vacation Bible school while teens were accorded the rite of confirmation, making them members. When the young people married, they walked down the aisle to the altar where the minister read the traditional vows. The new families continued the traditions as grandparents looked on. Most congregations have dwindled and fallen on hard times, struggling to continue.
Each year, I set up my plaster of Paris nativity set, that my Aunt Frannie painted before I was married. It’s battered and chipped but I cherish it. I constructed a stable using the kids’ Lincoln Logs and added a cardboard roof cut from a shoe box and covered with brown paper and straw from Dad’s farm. The figures depict Jesus in the manger with Mary and Joseph being visited by an angel. They are also joined by a shepherd with his sheep and a man with a camel. The Three Wise Men from the East are also included.
Do you honor Jesus’ birth?