Standing at a well, Mary Lynne Martin can't stop talking about the crazy shepherds being held in a nearby jail or how disgusting it is that someone would bear her child in a dirty barn stall. But as a Roman soldier staunchly walks past, she clams up and busies herself with her pail.
Twenty minutes later, she's repeating the whole scene as part of St. John's Lutheran Church of Highland's "A Visit to Bethlehem."
That's the way it's been nearly every year since 1997 at the McCandless church, whose walking tour of "Bethlehem" opens this weekend and continues the next.
Admission to the interactive event is free, though "beggars" certainly will try to procure visitors' spare change. Pastor Bill Diehm plays one of the beggars, soliciting donations for the North Hills Community Outreach, an area charity.
"It really gets people in the festive mood for Christmas," Diehm said. "In the world in which we live where there are so many different commercial entanglements, to be able to do this 20-minute tour, it allows you to get lost in the story in the best sense of the word."
About 200 members of the congregation are involved in the production, from building the sets to playing roles. When the production started in 1997, it took nearly nine months to set it up. Now, workers can get it ready in about six weeks, said Dawn Andersson, director of volunteer ministry.
The church tries to make the experience as authentic as possible. With bakeries, a jail and even a "census," where folks "returning to their hometown" of Bethlehem check in -- just as Mary and Joseph did -- visitors are transported back to the days of Christ. The village even has a winery where young men are stomping real grapes, producing the authentic smell of a winery as the grapes begin to ferment the second weekend.
The baby Jesus is not a newborn, but is always a live infant "donated" by a family in the congregation. The nativity, Andersson said, is the most moving part of the program.
"It's always a tender place," she said. "It's very dark and beautiful. The first year, we had one child who walked in and dropped to his knees and said 'Look, it's Jesus!'"
In the week between the two public productions, about 500 children from Catholic and nursery schools will come see Bethlehem. Martin, 42, of McCandless, said the children love what they see.
"The best part is watching the kids' eyes," Martin said. "As a woman from the well, we're supposed to be standing there gossiping about this news that a child was born in a manger. But the little kids, their eyes just light up when they come through. They actually think it's real, and that it's Jesus lying in a manger. It's amazing."
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