This is a live performance with associated music

Brief is From the Shamokin News Item
COAL TOWNSHIP — Three local Franciscan churches will present “The Living Nativity Scene” for a one-night experience at 6:30 p.m. Saturday at Our Lady of Hope Parish, 815 W. Chestnut St.
The three-act performance “runs the gamut” between a theatrical production and a religious church service, said Our Lady of Hope pastor, Father Nicholas Spano.
The production will be narrated and interspersed with hymns and scripture.
This is the second year the churches have produced “The Living Nativity Scene” since the COVID-19 pandemic, but Spano said this is the first time they’re producing it at such a large scale.

The production features approximately 80 to 85 participants, Spano said, including children from the parishes’ religious education program, students from Our Lady of Lourdes Regional School, adult parishioners, choir members and stagehands. The production will also feature livestock, including camels and sheep.
This year’s production also commemorates the 800th anniversary of Saint Francis’s first Nativity scene in Greccio, Italy.
Spano said Saint Francis’s rationale behind the Nativity scene was to remind people of the real reason Christmas is celebrated.
Similarly, the program is scheduled in such close proximity to Christmas to have an impact on people’s lives and employ Saint Francis’s rationale.
“We all kind of think that the over-commercialization of Christmas is a new thing,” Spano said. “It’s not a new thing; it dates back to the 13th century.”
Some iterations of the Nativity scene depict a large cast of characters, including artisans, children and merchants.
“Everybody from the village is involved,” Spano said of the all-inclusive Nativity scene, which is featured in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. “It’s an important Franciscan concept because they’re included in the Nativity. It also branches out to a more ecclesial understanding that everyone is welcome when we come to worship Christ, no matter how we do it.”
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