Bethlehem Event 2022

Putting on the event requires more than 2,000 volunteer hours to create the sets and experiences. There are over 50 actors and dancers that learn lines and backstories starting about 6 weeks before to have as accurate of recreation as possible and really allow the guests to experience the feeling of the town.

The town features live animals, food, and most shops as you would have seen them from goldsmiths, and wood carvers to perfumers, cheesemakers, and bakers. Planning and communication rely on historical accuracy from people who have visited, contacts, and historical documents from scholars and academics. The attention to detail and passion from volunteers to make sure it's as accurate as possible makes the re-creation of the first Christmas a memorable experience.

One of the biggest awws in the cities is the large 70’ x 14’ mural that includes city streets, a wash house and a peek outside the city walls serves as the backdrop for the indoor re-creation of Bethlehem.

Almost every four years since 1980, English Lutheran transforms the fellowship hall, a large room that when created has the Bethlehem Event in mind. The last event was 5 years ago in 2017. The event was postponed in 2021. This year's event coordination and production lead is Pete Bemis.

The setting is that Caesar Augustus has decreed the taking of a census. The mandate has drawn a crowd. Throngs of people are walking through the city, waiting to be enrolled. Everyone from gold herders to goldsmiths and cheesemakers take part in retelling the Christmas story.

Merchants are making and displaying their wares. Live animals populate the city's terrain. Middle Eastern donkeys, sheep, angora goats and chickens are within the city's walls and other tradesmen are there as well.

At the event. The villagers tell the story of Christ's birth. They give visitors an in-depth view of what it was like during the first century. Those involved in the production rely on historical accuracy and detail their goals to make the recreation memorable. All this is done amidst a backdrop that allows the visitors to the city to forget that are inside a church and it's the 21st century.

So much is done to make the recreation of the city realistic. One of the most labor-intensive projects during the 1996 Bethlehem event was a colorful mural 70 feet long and 14 feet high. Two volunteers from outside the congregation painted it. The mural includes city streets, a wash house for laundry, along with a peak outside the city walls of the nearby village.

It was painted on sections allowing it to be broken down and stored for the next production in 2004. A new home was added. The structure is a full-scale replica or a first-century home, complete with locks, hinges, and windows as they would have been in Christ time. Its logs are sized similarly to the way they were in the first century, along with the way they were tied before the mud brick was applied.

The 12-foot-long home includes one room separated by support pillars. The room height is just under six feet tall because people were shorter in that time. Also, the short ceilings helped keep the home warmer in winter. The first floor contains an area for the animal's cisterns for holding water, an indoor oven, and tools cooking tools and other grain preparations are kept in one area.