Annual Living Christmas tree concert opens today
Print
Share
Email to a friend
Add This
Article RatingImages
Cast members of “The Christmas Family: A Journey of Imagination and Hope,” include Tyler Forrester, at right, who plays a 10-year-old wheelchair-bound orphan in the lead role. Dustin Coover/Special to The Sentinel
Newburg’s living Christmas tree will come alive for the 33rd time tonight through Sunday.
Jim Graham from Green Spring Church of God has been a regular participant and has never missed a program in all 33 years. He said he keeps coming back because, “it’s such a good ministry, and it’s a ministry that always has fruits. Every one has its own special memories, it’s been a long journey, but it’s been a good one.”
Over 1,200 attended last year’s Living Christmas Tree events.
Every year singers come from all over — Newburg, Newville, Shippensburg, Green Spring, Otterbein and other places. There are no auditions and it is open to anyone who wants to sing.
“Everyone is a volunteer voice, there are no professionals,” said Sandy Hummel, the event’s advertising chairwoman.
Singers who participate are asked to wear white tops, women are asked to wear red scarves, men red bow ties. Hummel said singers also have to be willing to stand for more than an hour up in the tree, with the exception of the first row, which is reserved for the elderly. Fifty-seven singers will participate in this year’s program.
The Living Christmas tree is a long-standing tradition for Newburg First Church of God. The idea came from in the South.
Hummel said it began during a visit to Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Va., in 1974. Former pastor Hal Byers — along with Lewis Swartz, Jay Myers, Harold Grove and Vic Mowery — saw the Baptist church’s living Christmas tree and were inspired to construct one of their own.
The tree the men constructed has seven rows and stands 25 feet high, using welded steel beams and more than 1,200 feet of pine. There is one main support beam, with six additional beams spaced around it in a tepee shape.
Hummel said it takes three men to carry one beam. After the support beams are in place, next come the color-coded I-beams, the color-coded posts, the pine garland and then the lights.
The tree is torn down and built up every year and has found a permanent home at the head of the sanctuary.
Hummel said the tree has held up to 80 singers in the past, however, these days the choir only uses between 50 and 60. She said four metal supports were placed in the church basement to help compensate for the weight pressing down on the floor.
The repertoire for this year’s celebration consists of 15 songs — including “Lullaby to the Christ Child,” “Where Are the Shepherds Now?” and the “Hallelujah Chorus.”
The first eight pieces focus on the Christmas season, with the latter seven drawing attention to Christ’s passion, death, resurrection and second coming.
“We try to tell the whole Gospel story, we not only try to focus on Christmas, but we try to tell the whole story of Christ,” pianist Cathy Gipe said.
Gipe will be performing with organist Phil Shoeman and flutist Emily Ramsey this year. Shoeman will have the opportunity to “break in” the church’s newly purchased organ, brought in one week before the program.
For the second year in a row there will be drama accompanying the singing program. Pastor and drama coordinator John Byers has organized a modified version of a play titled “The Christmas Family: A journey of imagination and hope.”
The actors have no lines with the exception of the narrator, grandpa and the radio announcer, who are played by Steve Dibiase, Glenn Shew and John Leach respectively.
The main character is a 10-year-old wheelchair-bound orphan boy named Daniel. He is played by Tyler Forrester.
The boy spends his Christmas Eve next to a radio alone because he cannot go caroling with Miss Dickenson — played by Barb Thimgan — and the other children of the orphanage. (Warning — spoilers ahead.)
As he listens to “Grandpa’s Christmas Special” he is taken back in time to Christ’s birth.
As the boy listens to the story and watches a manger scene, he imagines what it must have been like for Mary and Joseph and the child — played by Jess Dunlap, Kristen Hech and Brandon Dunlap — having been rejected by the innkeepers, who are played by John Leach and Lee Mowery. He wonders what it must have been like for the shepherds as they greet the Christ child and welcome him into the world. Jeremy Dunlap, Cody Dunlap and Jared Keim are the shepherds.
After reflecting on these things, the boy converses with a Mr. Clemens who is dressed as Santa Claus (played by Travis Durf), who relates his story of being an orphan in the same orphanage.
These experiences lead the boy into a relationship with God as he realizes he is a member of a much larger family than the one he longs for so desperately.
The narrator is Daniel retelling this story after 20 years.
“It’s a great way of retelling the Christmas story and proclaiming the gospel which is needed so desperately in this world,” Byers said of the play.
