On Saturday our family honored our annual tradition of hanging out on a farm in Alpine, Utah in the freezing cold. It isn’t a secret snowboarding hill where horses pull you to the top (though that would be cool). Rather, it is the site of an annual living nativity started by a family in our ward.
This year I signed up to be the village blacksmith in “Bethlehem”. After getting suitably costumed, I arrived at my post to find a couple of young men from our ward already manning the hammer and anvil. We entered a master-apprentice relationship wherein my apprentices hammered on rough metal pieces with an enthusiasm only a 13 or 14 year-old boy can summon. My job, at the request of Alison, the mother in the family that runs the nativity, was to curb that enthusiasm a little. As neat as a ringing anvil sounds, it has the potential to drive the surrounding people and animals crazy when it goes on for hours.
Visitors from the community come to see the village of Bethlehem and a large collection of animals including horses, rabbits, sheep, camels, donkeys and llamas. There are also wise men, and Roman soldiers harassing the visitors. The highlight is Mary and Joseph in a stable with the baby Jesus. Visitors also have the chance to donate to some charities, should they want to.
In previous years I’ve sung Christmas hymns in small choral groups, helped welcome and direct visitors, tended a llama, and unloaded people from trailers after they took a brief hay ride from a church parking lot to the nativity site. The event has grown in size over the years such that there are now around 20,000 people that come through over the three days it is held.
One of the most fun years was when Shannon and I got to stand with the camels and share the vast array of knowledge about them we had gleaned from the Internet in the brief time between getting our assignment and when the first visitors arrived.
While we’ve had fun visiting and being in the nativity over the years, to Alison, our neighbor who started it all, it has been deeply meaningful. Her mother was undergoing treatment for cancer, and they felt such gratitude for the great people at the Huntsman Cancer Institute that they wished they could do something for them. Alison writes, “One night I had a dream that my family put on a big play and the people liked it so much we kept doing it night after night. After the play was over, we had raised over 1 million dollars for the Huntsman Cancer Institute. I told this dream to mom and we just laughed.”
Alison continues, “A few months after mom passed away, the holidays were here and I was missing her so much and wondered how our family would make it through Christmas without her, when the thought and vision of this nativity came to me. I could see the whole thing so clearly, as if mom had helped paint this picture for me from heaven.”
After being in the cold this year, I don’t think Shannon felt warm again until well into the next day. But it was great to do a little service and help people remember that God sent his Son, as a child born in humble circumstances, so that he could one day save us all.
Sounds like a great event. Although I thought the blacksmith job was supposed to be hot with that fire and all…..
You’d think, right? Several of our visitors were also disappointed in that regard when they came up to our fire pit only to discover it was powered by a red light bulb rather than coals.
When I looked at the pictures, I had this moment of thinking – “That’s how our ancestors looked!” Particularly your blacksmith selfie, as there were a few 21st century clues in the other photos. It was a weird feeling, but maybe that’s what happens when you do too much family history research.