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STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK One of the shepherds wore a cowboy hat atop his head covering. Baby Jesus wore a onesie with lamb’s ears. And choir members wore snowmobile and ski pants to protect them against the evening cold. The story of the birth of the Christ Child played out against the backdrop of Hailey’s Carbonate Ridge Sunday night just as it has since 2014. As temperatures go, it was quite balmy—in the low 30s versus the 10-degree temperatures it has dipped to in years past. But still not as mild as Bethlehem, the site of the original Nativity story.
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Kendra Drake leads in one of the Wise Men, who were played by Levi Higgs, Mario Yallico and Langdon Reinke.
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Mary and Joseph, played by Spence and Sarah Lawrence, arrived on a donkey, and the Wise Men arrived by camel. Spence Lawrence, works in property management. But, like Joseph, he has also worked as a carpenter—in Spence’s case, for Taylor Made Woodworks. “In doing this, I’ve come to realize that Joseph never speaks,” he said. “But he’s obedient.” Evelyn Albrecht, who organized the first Live Nativity through Life Church, said she did so because she wanted people to realize that the story of Jesus’s birth was more than a picture on a Christmas card.
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Joseph and Mary, played by Spence and Sarah Lawrence, make their way to the stable.
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“He was a live baby—the way, the truth and the light,” she said. Mike Rose wore a cowboy hat atop his shepherd’s head covering—a hat that early shepherds probably would have enjoyed as it would have kept the sunlight--and the light from the Christmas Star—out of their eyes. “I tell all the little shepherds that my staff is not for the sheep but to keep little shepherds in line,” he quipped. Jeral Williams, who brings the camels to Hailey from Idaho Falls, said his two-humped Bactrian camel comes from a line of camels that originated in Mongolia so their thick coat makes them quite suitable to winter cold.
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The Archangel Gabriel played by Dan Bernhard tells Mary that she is with child and that the child will be the savior of the world.
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His one-humped dromedary camels, however, originated in the Middle East and so they would probably have preferred to have been doing the reenactment in the little town of Bethlehem, he said. Williams said he will take the camels to nine live nativities this year—one as far away as Richland, Wash. They take part in even more lie nativities some years. More than 125 volunteers took part in Sunday’s production, including parking attendants waving foot-long orange-lit batons. Among them, Irma Reigle, who handed out small Bibles. “I like that this Live Nativity makes it real,” she said. “He died for us.”
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The Archangel Gabriel and other angels rejoice at the Christ Child’s birth.
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DID YOU KNOW? Camels can live between 40 and 50 years and run up to 40 miles per hour in short bursts. The dromedaries weigh between 660 and 1,300 pounds and the Bactrian camels, up to 2,200 pounds. The wild Bactrian camel is endangered.
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