For the 10th straight year, Knights of Columbus from two Abbotsford parishes teamed up for an annual tradition — assembling the outdoor St. James Church Nativity display that requires all the effort, planning, and manpower of a miniature community barn raising.
Carried out over two weekends, the annual project started on a Saturday morning, turning the St. James parish lawn into a winter workplace of ladders, lumber, tools, and Knights from St. James and St. Ann’s in rain jackets and work gloves.
Beam by beam, the frame went up. Dozens of numbered roof panels followed using a spray-painted coding system invented years ago so the roof can be assembled like oversized wooden shingles. To the uninitiated it looks chaotic. To the Knights, it’s a map. Volunteers climb up and down ladders, passing tools, aligning edges, and tightening bolts in the cold drizzle.
The second weekend is more aesthetic: laying flameproof straw, hanging lights and angels, setting up the fan to keep the plexiglass clear, and staging the Holy Family with their familiar cast of shepherds, wise men, and animals. Among them is the camel whose head was found floating in a nearby creek after vandals tore open the display in its early years. Parishioners salvaged everything they could, constructed a new Wise Man from thrift-store finds, and restored the Nativity in just a few hours.
Now rebuilt, refreshed, and glowing each night, the Nativity will remain in place until the Feast of the Presentation on Feb. 2, 2026.
