Youth Column: Lockdown Nativity

Monday December 13 2021

Young members of St James' Church in Ayr share their experience of last year's 'bubble nativity'.

ADVENT 2020: For the first time the children of St James, Ayr – like so many congregations – could not perform a nativity in church.

Unwilling to be defeated, the youngsters donned their costumes, learned their lines (scripted by Junior Church leader Moyra Smith) and recorded their parts from the safety of their household bubbles. The material was edited and put together, and the result was a “Bubble Nativity”, shown in church and via YouTube. Two participants, Heather McKinley (11) who played Mary and Lily Gorman (9), one of the angels, share their experience.

Heather

My brother, Connor, and I enjoy attending Sunday school, but we especially love the run-up to Christmas at our church. The carols, the decorations, the giant sparkling Christmas Tree and the Christmas story make Christmas so special. However, our favourite activity is our Church Nativity which we have been in every year. I was even lucky enough to play baby Jesus when I was three months old! So, in 2020 when we got to November, we were sad thinking there would be no Nativity until we got a message from Moyra, our Junior Church Leader, to tell us about the plan for our Bubble Nativity.

We were excited to receive our scripts and discover we were playing Joseph and Mary. I had a lot of lines to learn, and Connor had a few words to say - he has Cerebral Palsy and has limited speech – but the script allowed him to be a part of it as well. Most of our scenes were filmed in front of our Christmas tree at home but one scene was Mary and Joseph leaving to travel to Bethlehem which entertained our neighbours and took a few attempts due to noisy cars passing. During lockdown both Connor and I had made videos for school, dancing and choir so we were used to doing it a few times until it was finished.

It was really exciting getting to see the finished nativity and was nice to be a part of something that hopefully the whole church enjoyed. Even though we were apart, we still came together to celebrate the birth of Jesus.

Lily

During lockdown my Junior Church did lots of different things to help people in the community and to cheer everyone up. We did cards for people in care homes and NHS workers, we painted stones with rainbows, and we made rainbows to put in our windows, we planted plants for people. So, you can see, we did lots of things in our Junior Church.

But my very favourite was our Bubble Nativity. I enjoyed making it. We had some difficulties with the technical stuff, because my mum is not very good with technology, but we worked it out in the end. We had a lot of fun and lots of laughs making the video clips. I loved dressing up as an angel and saying my lines. It was great remembering the nativity story. It made me feel Christmassy and festive inside. I felt like a part of everything, even though we weren’t actually together. Even better: my grandparents and family got to see it, too, even though I could not see them. That made them feel Christmassy, too. I loved it.

I have not been in Junior Church for very long, but I am very glad that I joined. It has been great feeling like I am helping other people and it has been great feeling that I was part of things.

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