Mountain Brook Baptist Living Nativity celebrates 50 years

Angels were indeed on high at Mountain Brook Baptist Church.

On cue, kids dressed in robes and halos levitated over live sheep, donkeys, cows and, of course, baby Jesus.

The angels had walked down Montevallo Road and hiked up a hill to fly in the air, or at least appear to be on the hill behind the roof of the manger.

And all of Mountain Brook was there to watch.

Fifty years after the first production, the MBBC’s Living Nativity still welcomes 300-400 people for each of three nights leading up to Christmas Eve. But the significance of the event is about more than numbers.

“I think it’s meant a lot to this community and is about what the meaning of Christmas is — getting together to worship the Lord and maintain family relationships,” said Mary Scott, who played the original “Mary” in the nativity and is still a member of the church.

Scott’s daughter, Ashley, and son, John III, acted in the nativity years later, and last year her grandson John Paul IV was an angel.

Scott’s counterpart back in 1963, Richard Adams, who played Joseph, is also the first of three generations to play as wise men, angels and shepherds in the production.

“I could repeat the whole [script], as could my children and grandchildren,” Adams said. “After three or four performances a night for three or four nights, you have it memorized.”

The production’s organizers are hoping both Adams and Scott will be part of a special reunion night this year where members of nativity casts from over the years step into their old roles.

According to the church’s history book, Dr. Dodson Nelson, MBBC pastor starting in the early 1960s, realized the church had its biggest crowds at Easter and Christmas, and he wanted to do something to reach out to the community on one of those holidays. With that, it became a project of the associate deacons to tell the Christmas story to the community.

The script for the 17-minute program has been the same all 50 years and has continued through rain and frigid temperatures. After all, no one can mess with the legacy of Nelson’s voice that plays on the recording.

“Everyone says it’s what they imagine God’s voice would sound like,” said Ed Willis, who has run the sound for the production for the last 25 years after taking over for his dad. “It’s booming, very deep. People ask if we would ever redo the tape, but it wouldn’t be the same without his voice.”

Nelson’s voice was re-recorded 10 years ago to make the sound more clear, but even its music is original since the original sheet music couldn’t be located those many decades later.

Not much else has changed about the production over the years, either.

There have been live animals since the start, but now they come from a petting zoo in Springville that delivers and takes them home each night. A few years ago, a camel was added to the mix.

The biggest change to the production came in 2002 when the church built a new education wing onto its building. Plans for the location of the new space happened to be on the hill where the nativity had always taken place. 

“When we went to the City Council to add onto the building, neighbors said they wanted to make sure we still had the nativity,” Willis said.

With popular demand from the community, for the past decade it has been held in the church’s lower parking lot instead, where there is not a built-in hill to create the illusion of flying angels.

But they still sing from on high.

This year’s Living Nativity will be held Dec. 21-23 at 6:45, 7:30 and 8:15 p.m. each night in the lower parking lot at the church. As always, hot chocolate, cider and cookies will be served.

The day the cow got loose

A Living Nativity memory 

By Hoyt R. Wilson

Amid snarled traffic and horn blowing, people stood beside their cars and laughed. The scene set the stage for record attendance at our first Christmas pageant in 1963.

Mountain Brook Baptist wanted to stage a living nativity as a Christmas gift to our community. Our associate deacons constructed a stable and filled it with sheep, a donkey and a cow. They enlisted brightly robed wise men, shepherds, angels and main actors to recreate with music and narration the ageless story of the birth of Christ.

Other animals seemed OK, but the cow was not too happy. She continued to moo and kick her stable stall then was ignored after she was fed. The cow, however, continued in distress.

One hour later, a frantic phone call to the church office reported a cow wandering around the busy intersection in front of Crestline School. Bryant Strain, our associate pastor fresh out of seminary, was dispatched to the scene. After several attempts, Strain was able to tie a rope around the cow’s neck and tried to lead it back to the stable. She wouldn’t move.

Then he tried to lead her up a ramp into a pickup truck that was passing by. Things got worse! The cow stepped on the truck driver’s foot and sent him to the hospital. By now, the crowd was cheering for the cow.

Using his recent training in theological problem solving, Strain called the farmer who owned the cow and discovered that the cow was carried off without her young calf. Now it all made sense. Momma cow wanted to get to her baby.

The whole affair was solved when cow and calf were reunited, and both had starring roles in the Christmas pageant. The story of the escaped cow spread quickly through the community, which guaranteed a record attendance for the pageant. Our church became known as, “Oh, that’s the church with the animals at Christmas.” 

No more escaped animals, but even now we attempt to share the good news of Christmas in every way possible!