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This year for our Church Christmas party, we attempted a Back to Bethlehem theme. I have heard of this being done but never personally attended or participated in one. I knew it would be a big undertaking, and it was. But I felt really good about the results. Everything came together and honestly far exceeded my expectations. And the feedback from the ward members was so kind and appreciative, it made it all worth it. One Elder serving in our ward from Utah told me, “this was the best ward activity I have ever been to in my life!” I took that as the highest compliment and was glad we had decided to tackle this theme! When planning it we looked online quite a bit, and while we did find some helpful pictures, there was never much explanation. So I’m here today to help give you all the details of how we pulled this together, and all the things I wish I had known. I hope it’s helpful for you as you plan an event like this.

First, I should mention that we are a fairly small ward. The other ward that meets in our building is even smaller. So step one was that I approached the other ward to ask if they would be interested in combining our ward Christmas socials. Miraculously, they agreed and told me they were planning on a Back to Bethlehem theme! That seemed meant to be to me, so forward we pressed! Combining with another ward allowed us to pool our resources, both manpower and budget, to pull this off. So that might be something to consider, if you are also a smaller ward. I’ll break this up into three main categories to help you as you prep: decorations, food and program. And to see a video of how it all came together you can check that out here. (and give me a follow while you’re over there).

Back to Bethlehem Invitation Flyers

I used this canva template to make our flyers for our ward social. Here’s a look at how they turned out:

Back to Bethlehem DIY Decorations

Our schedule for setting up for the event looked like this:

• Wednesday night: Young Men set up all the lighting as their mutual activity. This took about 90 minutes with about 15 people working. Well… ok… maybe 10 of them were working 😉 The goal was to hang enough Christmas lights that we didn’t need to use the overhead lights. Mission accomplished.
• Thursday: Set up tents and begin to decorate pretty much all day.
• Friday: Another full day of setting up- finish decorating and setting up lobby, stage etc
• Friday night: Event was from 6-8pm
• Saturday morning: 10-12 clean up crew (this was my favorite part about doing it on a Friday night, we didn’t have to clean up that night! We wanted to leave it up and keep the vibe of Bethlehem in tact instead of turning on the lights and starting to tear it all down right away).

Back to Bethlehem DIY Tents

It took some planning and breaking out the old measuring tape, but eventually we came to the conclusion that we could fit about 10 pop up tents around the perimeter of our church gym. Three on either side and then four along the back (which is a carpeted overflow area from our chapel). We assigned each ward to be in charge of setting up, decorating and manning 5 of the pop up tents. The pop up tents were designated as follows: Meat/butcher, veggies, bakery, fruit, sweets, games, crafts X4. I kinda wondered if we should have 2 meat tents, and the answer we learned later with hind sight was- yes. Yes, we should have. Looking back I wish we had made 2 meat tents, 2 game tents, and 2 craft tents (and then other ones as stated). I’ll go into that a bit more later.

Our ward was in charge of the meat/butcher, veggie, bakery and 2 craft tents. We tried to find 5 people in the ward to help so each person could be in charge of 1 tent. From finding a popup to use, to gathering the materials to decorate it, to coming and putting it all together. That ended up not totally working out and we (the 2 of us on the committee) ended up doing the 5 tents mostly on our own (with my awesome mother and father in law helping!) I do think having 1 person assigned per tent is still the ideal way to to go if you can pull that off. I learned some things in setting up these tents and I’ll try to break it down in a step by step format for you:

First, start with a pop up shade canopy tent like this. It’s helpful to have the type where the legs are more straight rather than the ones that jut out at a big angle. It’s also helpful if all the tents you use are similar in size. 10X10 is a good size, we found. Whereas some of the tents people brought were like 13X13 and we couldn’t use those. They were just too big. Bonus points if the popup is white. That will save you a lot of effort. But chances are you aren’t working with white ones. We just asked around the ward who had ones that they were willing to let us borrow and had them bring them to the church.

Next, assuming you don’t have a white canopy top you are working with, you’ll want to cover up that blue or green (or whatever color it is) canopy with some sheets. I think white, brown, or any kind of cream or off-white are good choices. I found you’ll need 2 king flat sheets minimum to cover it. That will cover the majority of it and if you are strategic about leaving the part that you can’t really see uncovered that could work. Thrift stores are going to be your best friend for this event. I found so many great things there, and I was sure to shop on the “sale” days to cut cost even further. Another option for covering the top is one of those huge painters drop cloths from like Home Depot or Harbor Freight. Those can be expensive, but if you have one in your painting supplies- perfect! Another tip for covering up that top is to do it before you raise it all the way up to the tallest height. This might sound obvious but it took us like 3 tents and trying to do it with broom handles before my smart mother in law was like, “why don’t we lower it down, cover it, and then raise it up?” duh! Smart woman.

Next is the fun part where you get to start turning the tent into something truly unique. Again, I shopped my home and thrift stores for these items. Great things to look for: drapes, curtains, bed skirts, blankets, and just fabric. Zip ties and safety pins were used by the hundreds in this step. I recommend bringing them in bulk. I just tried to gather things in the corners around the poles of the pop up and then along the top as well. Some of the tents got really fancy with adding things on the roof too. I was so impressed with what people came up with! That’s why I think it’s great to get someone different doing each tent, so they all look unique!

Once the tent is “dressed”, then you can start thinking about the inside. Do you want to hang lanterns? (we found some light pot metal type ones from the dollar store that we zip tied to the top of the tent) baskets? Crates? Rugs? We wanted a table in each tent, so think about what you want to cover the table with and what platters you’ll need. Again thrift stores are great for things like baskets, wooden platters, and candlesticks. And hit up the dollar store for led candles. You definitely cannot have too many. I think it’s actually even cheaper to buy them in bulk like this.

Last you can string Christmas lights along the outside, inside or both of your tent. We were going for NO overhead lights on in our gym. It was a big job to string all the Christmas lights to the ceiling of the church gym (which is step number one before you even start on the tents), but I think it was totally worth it. It felt like a starry Bethlehem night. Anyway, if you are not using the overhead lights, extra lighting inside the tents in the form of Christmas lights or electric candles will be helpful.

For finishing touches, people had brought so many things from around their home like vases, benches, faux trees and plants, chests and all kinds of random decor. We piled it all in the middle of the gym and just started it sticking it around in corners or between tents for the final touch. A guy in the other ward actually brought in about 10 palm trees nailed to wooden boards that we sprinkled around the gym and they looked so awesome! I also made signs for each of the tents using my cricut and some scrap cardboard. I cut the letters for each sign in English with my cricut. Then using google translate I did my best to write the Hebrew word for each tent on the sign with a sharpie.

To see the fully-completed tents you’ll have to keep reading!

Back to Bethlehem Misc Decor & Seating

With the tents along the perimeter of the gym, that left the middle wide open. There was much debate as to how to solve the seating crisis. Since we were combining wards we didn’t have enough tables to put up (or room to put them) to accommodate everyone. I had seen on other blogs that most people who do Back to Bethlehem have people bring blankets to sit on the floor. Our wards were very concerned that this wouldn’t work for most people. We decided to provide as much seating as possible, but also to encourage families to bring blankets to eat picnic style. We decided to set up the seminary tables (they are long and skinny- like desks) so that they would take up less room than the round tables. We set them up in a U-shape mimicking the layout of the tents, and leaving the center of the gym clear for floor seating.

In the very center of the gym we set up our water well, made out of a plastic barrel and covered with a stone plastic tablecover like this. We used the same tablecovers as backdrops in various other places around the gym as well. We filled the barrel up with water bottles and juice boxes. We decided we didn’t want kids running around with cups of juice without tables to sit at and things so juice boxes sounded like a safer bet. They were popular too!

We covered the tables with white tablecloths and used burlap table runners, white vases, and eucalyptus strands to dress them up a bit. We were able to get seating for about 40-45 this way. To separate the tables from tents we wanted to have a walking path so we used a cobblestone aisle runner along the whole perimeter. I used painters tape to tape it down every few feet. I was worried it would get ripped and ruined right away, but it actually held up pretty well. Some people even thought we might try to save and reuse it, but I was like no- toss it!

I don’t think we have a picture of this, but we ended up using the second lobby in our building for additional seating. We set up I think 5 round tables and squeezed in another 40 or so chairs so that in total we had seating for at least 80. We had talked about doing the games out in the second lobby but ended up using it for seating instead.

Back to Bethlehem Stage Decor

When it came to decorations I had it divided in my head between: gym floor, stage, and lobby. I’ve given you most of the details and layout of the gym floor, so on to the stage! For the stage I really wanted to create a cardboard cityscape to cover the ugly doors under the stage. I anticipated this to be a big undertaking, but it actually only took 2 of us about 3 hours to cut it all out and have it ready. I was able to get sheets of cardboard from my husband’s work and that helped to have uniform sheets of cardboard to work with.

First I designed 3 templates, just using a ruler and a pencil I roughly drew out some roof tops. Once I had 3 that I liked I used them to trace the other sheets of cardboard and just kept repeating the same rooflines. Next, we used some black paint to add windows and a few doors. Last we folded each sheet into thirds so that they would stand accordion style. Also to give it some dimension. When it came time to set them up we used painters tape and fishing line to keep them in place and added Christmas lights along the top of the “roof line”. Because Christmas lights make everything better. The finished result was a pretty big wow-factor. And practically for free. I do recommend using a cardboard cutter– it will save your hands!

Oh the sage was a sweet little stable and manger set up that was made by someone in the other ward. And we hung a star so that it would be over the manger. This is where Mary & Joseph sat during the program. We also have the projector set up for our program as well.

Back to Bethlehem Lobby Decor

The last area to decorate was the lobby! In the lobby we wanted to have a few elements including: a tax booth, a photo backdrop, a “clothing store”, and a city gate into Bethlehem. First stop when you walk in the doors was the tax booth. Here you get a pouch of pennies to use to buy your food throughout the night. So I guess it’s really more like a “tax return” booth ;). A member of the ward built the booth out of pallets and I made a sign to match the others for the top. We had the elders from our two wards run the tax booth, welcoming people and explaining how the coins would work as people came in.

We got a bunch of little pouches from temu and put about 6 pennies in each pouch. Each person received a pouch as they came through the door. There were little baskets at each booth for people to pay before they took their food. The kids got a kick out of having their own pouch to spend!

We also had a little photo booth area for people to take photos as a family as they came in. This is not the backdrop we used, but could be a good one!

The clothing store was really just a table with extra pieces of fabric and robes for people that didn’t come in costume so they could “shop” for a costume if they wanted. We tried not to pressure people at all, but the option was there in case they just hadn’t had the time or resources to come up with something on their own. We asked a sister to be in charge of this so she spent time gathering materials and things to bring for that table. Of course it was first come, first serve and once it was gone, it was gone. She also had a basket there full of rope that people could use to tie sheets or robes or headdresses.

For the city gate we ordered a cardboard pop up entrance from Oriental Trading. You could make one with cardboard or scrap wood- we considered it but ended up using this instead. I also laid down some of the cobblestone aisle runner from the front doors through the gate and into the gym. And again, remember everything’s better with Christmas lights?!

And what’s a city gate without some Roman soldiers standing guard? My cute son took part in this since he had a roman soldier costume from a previous Halloween. He had fun taxing the people as they came through the gates. Here’s the link to a similar costume for the adults.

Back to Bethlehem Food

Now that I’ve written 3,000 words on the decorations (I hope you found it helpful!)- on to the food! I have a lot less to say about the food since we asked the Relief Society to take the lead on this. And they did not disappoint- everything was truly amazing! I was blown away with how it all came together.

Butcher/Meat Booth

The meat booth was a joint effort from both wards. Our ward was in charge of chicken and the other ward was in charge of beef. Our ward decided to smoke 250 chicken legs- split up between 4 people. We had some men in the ward who graciously agreed to smoke 50+ chicken legs each on their traegers. I’ll be honest, I was pretty busy running around during the event so I am not totally sure what the other ward ended up bringing. But I know there was a roaster full of meatballs and even some smoked fish.

We had about 2 people assigned to run each booth during the event. They helped with serving, taking “payment” and restocking from the kitchen when necessary. The meat booth had by far the longest line, and if we went back and did this again I would definitely make 2 separate tents to help with that. We should have done chicken on one side of the gym and other meats on the other side. I tried encouraging people to go to other booths that didn’t have a line first and come back for meat later, but nobody budged- hah! I don’t know if they were worried we would run out of meat, or if it’s just too engrained in them to wait in one long line at church functions. We even made an announcement over the mic telling people they could go to the booths in any order and didn’t need to wait in the long line. But nobody seemed to move.

Bakery Booth

The main thing we wanted at the bakery booth was pita. That turned out to be hard to source. But those ladies did finally find some at a reasonable price from a restaurant service store. We realized we probably couldn’t have a whole tent with just pita so they got some fun baguettes, crackers, and old fashioned-type loaves of bread. I think they got most of that from Costco. I tried to sneak in some pictures while they were setting up before it all got ravished- but I don’t think they were quite done laying it all out yet either. Doesn’t it look pretty??

Veggies Booth

I think the fruit and veggies tent were my favorite for how they turned out. Fruits and vegetables are just so pretty, and so authentic. The veggie booth also had nuts. Not much to say here except- yum!

Fruit Booth

The other ward was in charge of the fruit booth, and I thought they did an amazing job of making it feel truly like a fruit market stand. What do you think?

They had apples, oranges, pineapple, grapes, dried apricots and figs and some fruit salads and dips. I love all the texture and details they added to the inside of the tent- especially the rug on the ground! I wish we had had rugs for all the booths. In fact I found some at Salvation army that we tried to get them to let us borrow- but no luck.

Sweets Booth

I didn’t get a good look at the sweets booth once it was all set up, but I think it was mostly store bought cookies, brownies and treats. I think this would be a good spot to have members sign up to bring things- you might even get some people willing to make more authentic types of desserts like bakalava or pastries?

I was just amazed at everyone’s creativity as they decorated the tents making them each unique and so inviting. Here’s a look at the row of tents on the side of the gym where everyone was entering-

I realize this has gone on very long, so I’ll leave it here for now and I’ll cover activities and the program in a part 2 blog post which is now available here!