Each year, Christ Our Savior, Livonia’s Early Childhood Program combines with the Sunday School children to put on a Christmas production for the congregation and the Early Childhood families. They host a meal before the program and celebrate afterward with cookies for all who attend. They usually begin rehearsing in October so the children will be ready to tell the account of our Savior’s birth.
In 2020, due to the pandemic, they were disappointed that they could not have that many families in the building for the event, so they decided to put together a video production of the children enacting the Christmas account as told in Luke 2:1–19. A member of the congregation, Paul Riegel, agreed to help record the children each day; he carefully edited each recording to ensure that all children in the early childhood program were featured. The newest infant in the program had her debut as baby Jesus. They were blessed with unusually warm weather, which allowed them to capture Mary and Joseph’s journey to Bethlehem outside, along with the shepherds abiding in the fields keeping watch over their flock. Thanks to the video editor, no one knew that the toddler angels were dancing to ‘Baby Shark’ as their teachers jived off camera with encouragement. (For some reason, they were not as inspired to move about to the song ‘Gloria in Excelsis.’) It was not a problem for the editor, who just replaced one song with another in the final cut.
As the finishing touches were added to the program, the pastors thought it would be fitting for this to be played as the Gospel Lesson at the Christmas Eve services. Rev. Dean Davenport, senior pastor, explains: “Because of our state of affairs, we were encouraged to do things differently when it comes to worship, Christmas gatherings, and programs. We knew that we wanted the children involved somehow in telling the story of Jesus’ birth. We knew that, especially now, the members of our congregation and the children’s families needed to see and hear of how God is present with us!”
The video was posted on the church’s website for families and congregation members to watch. Church members and Early Childhood families were filled with joy as they watched the little children actively involved in telling the Good News of such great joy. Christ is born! Hallelujah!
You can watch the video here.
