For the last two weekends hundreds of people visited Fort Assiniboine to take part in the 19th annual Journey to Bethlehem.
The tradition was started in 1998, by the Fort Assiniboine Friends Christian Community and is modeled after a production in the United States. In the play the audience follows the Benhadad family on their journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem, with the help of their guide Rachel or Jared, to register for the census to see what Mary and Joseph experienced more than 2,000 years ago.
The walk-through nativity story runs nightly from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the St. John Vianney Catholic Church on Main Street in Fort Assiniboine and ended at the Friendship Centre or museum.
It takes about 20 minutes to walk through the nativity scene. Depending on the number of people waiting, walk-throughs start every eight to 10 minutes. When the Barrhead Leader visited, on Nov. 20, the wait was slightly longer, enough for the choir to entertain the audience with three or four Christmas carols.
“It is a huge production. There are 100 actors alone needed to put on the production each night,” Margaret Attrill, casting director said.
Catherine Anne Prociuk, a facilitator for the production, added in addition to the actors it takes a small army of volunteers to put on the play each night.
For example, she said, in recent years they have added numerous outbuildings to the set.
“When we first started out in 1998, we used tents, but we found that because of the elements we would often have to repair them at the last minute,” she said.
Prociuk said a number of people also donate their animals for the play, adding whenever possible they try to use species of animals that would be true to the play, but on occasion they have to make allowances.
“Finding someone who has a camel for the wise men to use is difficult, so instead we use llamas, and tell them because of how long their journey is they wore off their humps,” she joked.
