We recently had a Back to Bethlehem Church Christmas party and I shared all about our decorations, invitations, and food in the first post. Now I’m back to share about our activities, the program, and anything else I think of that I haven’t told you yet! How’s that for a plan? So let’s dive in where I left off.

Game Booth

If you want to see a video of these booths coming to life, you can check that out here. We really wanted to have some fun interactive activities for people to enjoy for the first portion of our event before we started the formal program. We tried hard to have things to offer for all ages in the hopes that it would keep people engaged and occupied, and allow those who wanted to socialize to do that instead of having to entertain their kids. We also wanted to allow plenty of time for people to enjoy the booths and food without feeling rushed. But didn’t want the kids who finished in 5 minutes to be running in circles. The first thing we offered was a game booth- mostly aimed at the tween/teens but anyone was welcome to use it. In hindsight I wish we had had 2 game booths and 2 craft booths (rather than 1 game booth and 4 craft booths). The game booth was a big hit, and we just didn’t need as much space for the kids in the craft booths as we anticipated.

The game booth was just set up with several tables and board and card game options for kids to play. It would be fun to stick with more authentic type games like mancala and chess if possible (not saying those are what they played back then, but they seem a little more era-appropriate than say, battleship). However, we ended up having all kinds of games because that’s just what we had to offer. Some kids really got into it and I think it kept them busy for quite a while. You can’t see it in the photo but they also had baskets hanging inside that had additional game choices. Doesn’t it look awesome? The couple that put this tent together really did an amazing job.

Craft Booths

We ended up making the whole back row of the gym craft booths- with 4 tents total. As I mentioned above I wish we had split this space between crafts and games. Well- we know for next time. Some kids really enjoyed the crafts, but we just didn’t need 4 tents dedicated to them. We thought we might have up to 60 kids so we were trying to plan space to accommodate them all. We had 1 or 2 people helping to run each booth to keep things running as smoothly as possible.

The crafts were intended to be activities to occupy the primary children, but of course anyone was welcome to come do one- or a few! We ordered all the crafts through Oriental Trading which made it really easy as far as prep. Everything came ready to go! One booth had wooden nativity ornaments that the kids could decorate with paint pens. Another booth had these nativity wreaths. There was a baby jesus craft, coloring sheets, and lanterns. They have a little different stuff available on their site now, but I would just look through the religious crafts and pick a few.

We covered each of the craft tables with burlap and then put a layer of kraft paper just over the top of the table to give them a flatter surface to craft and color on. I should mention we also had background music/noise playing as soon as we said opening prayer throughout the event until it was time for the program. We played like a bazaar market type music– you could look around youtube until you find one you like.

Back to Bethlehem Program

Last, but not least, we had our actual program! We started the program about 90 minutes after the event began. The plan was to do it after about 60 minutes but we ran into some technical trouble so it got a bit delayed. It was a mix of videos, narration, and musical numbers. I used some other programs I found online as a starting point and worked from there. Rather than doing a traditional nativity, it more moves through the nativity story while highlighting the different characters and what they might have gone through. And how it can relate to us today. I’ve made the program available for you to download so you can look it over, edit it, use bits and pieces or the whole thing! You can get access to that by filling out the form below.

Our primary angel choir sang “Picture a Christmas” as part of the program. We asked the kids to come in white and we had halos for them, as well as extra white tshirts for those who didn’t come in white. You can see we also forgot to turn the projector off during their song- whoops!

For another musical number we had a quartet sing “Mary Did You Know” and if you look closely you can see they were accompanied by a guitar and two mandolins- how cool is that? And doesn’t the stage just look magical with the Christmas lights? I love how it all turned out. To see more details on how we did this head over here.

Here’s a look at the stage from the back during the program. You can also get a good look at how the lights were strung from this angle. We did show clips from the church nativity movie as well. So we needed to have projector, mic, speakers, and piano all ready and set up. I’m so glad my husband thought to get these cool .5x image during the program! I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off.

My favorite thing was we didn’t clean up until the next morning. We had the event on a Friday night and then we had people assigned to come clean up Saturday morning. I have a bit of a pet peeve when the party starts getting taken down so quickly and abruptly. It’s awesome that people are willing to help- but it totally kills the mood and suddenly its like “well party’s over I guess!” With so much extra work going into this event I really wanted to preserve the mood and feeling of Bethlehem without it all coming crashing down when we turned the lights on. Plus- we were all exhausted and ready to go home. My husband was worried no one would show up to help the next morning, but people totally came through and we actually had quite the crew that did. It went so fast I didn’t know what happened to half the stuff- hah!

If I could give you a few pieces of advice as you embark on this endeavor it would be:

• Start planning for this early- ideally I would say September/October at the latest.
• Be sure to delegate- get as many auxiliaries and people involved as you can! Especially when it comes to decorating you need a good team you can rely on.
• Make room in the budget- tell your bishop early if you want to pull this off so they can allocate for it in the budget. We ended up spending about $1,000 on this event from our ward ($800 of that was for food), and I’m not sure what the other ward spent.
• And good luck!

If you have questions or what to share your back to bethlehem night, the best way to connect with me is on instagram @partylikeacherry.