12/24/2025
Christmas Eve has always been my favorite day of the year. For the last few years we've spent Christmas Eve doing nativity scenes at churches who have Christmas Eve events and services. I will always treasure these memories with my husband and the kids.
My favorites and most memorable:
- We had one in Gastonia at St. Mark's Episcopal Church. The high that day was 22°, but Matthew was 13 and way too cool to wear a coat.
Within 2 minutes of being at the church, he was freezing. I had a couple of small square blankets I kept in the trucks for rabbits, so we made him a very small cape. One of the parishioners took him inside for coffee and to warm up. After the outside petting zoo, it was time for their service in which our animals were part of the nativity play. We had to lead them from the front of the church all the way to the altar. All went well with the sheep, goats, llama, and alpaca... then it was Silas the donkey's turn and he lived up to donkey's reputation for being stubborn. The parishioners were cracking up at his antics to resist the walk up the aisle.
After finally dragging him all the way up, he stood nicely for exactly 2 minutes and then filled the very large, very echo-y sanctuary with the sound of his people. I was sure we wouldn't be invited back, but they all loved everything about it and became regular clients.
Sadly, for us, the heater in my Dodge crapped out and it was a very cold hour and a half back to the farm. We stopped at a QT in Rock Hill to warm ourselves for a moment.
- We also have done the midnight Christmas Eve service at Matthew's United Methodist Church for years. This one is special because we dress up as shepherds and the congregation come out to the nativity with candles and singing Christmas hymns. It's just magical. That's when our Christmas Eve trip to QT became tradition. No place to grab food is open at 1 am on Christmas morning, so we stop and grab taquitos an drinks.
It was just my little family making lasting memories and traditions.
Today, we have our last nativity ever. Also, our last mobile event ever. It has been a wonderful, hard, educational, heartbreaking, backbreaking, magical adventure. I am so thankful for so many opportunities to meet so many wonderful people along the way. I loved talking with people and giving them education about all of our farm babies. No one was ever in a bad mood when we showed up with our animals, and that's pretty rare in the service industry.
I am both incredibly sad that this season of our lives is ending, but also incredibly excited to have some down time and opportunities to be bored again and weekends not booked solid.
Thank so many of you for taking this amazing journey with us.
*The business is for sale, so hopefully another family will soon pick up the mantle and make their own memories bringing happiness and joy to our treasured clients. Thanks for the memories and we wish you all many blessings in 2026.
