Saturday morning, an Austin newspaper story said a church there hoped 1,800 people would attend its Christmas pageant this year.

Saturday night, in Blanco County, the Johnson City First United Methodist Church’s Living Nativity Pageant finished its Christmas season with 1,844!

“That doesn’t just break our old record,” said pageant director Dale Hardy, “it smashes that record and stomps on the pieces!”

Attendance has climbed steadily over the years as regular visitors come back and bring their friends and as new people learn about it. The numbers even held up last year in cold, wet weather...and this year took off like a rocket with cool but dry weather and little wind to chill the bleachers.

The final night of performances was seen by 897 people, about one carload short of 900.

The proudest member of the audience was Ruth Blair, who directed the pageant for decades while she was secretary at the church and head of FUMC’s theatrical performances. Now she’s retired and living near Dallas, but was back for the pageant’s 50th anniversary.

“I was afraid it might have gone downhill since I left,” Blair said, “without my hand on the controls. But it hasn’t. There are more people, the space is larger, and the set works better than our old one. I hate to admit it, but it’s better.”

Blair was honored between shows Saturday night and again in church Sunday morning for the years of work she put in on it, growing it from a static tableau to a full music-and-light pageant with actors and animals.

The animals were almost as big a hit as the show itself, especially with city kids who had never met sheep and donkeys up close and personal.

The animals were as much a community-wide effort as the cast and crew. They were loaned by the Exotic Zoo and the Jesse Outlaw Ranch, and Sally Armstrong brought miniature Donkey Oaties. After seeing the pageant for the first time, KC Gilbert and Charles Sowell volunteered to bring critters of their own, and even costumed up as shepherds to help wrangle them.

The visitors, as always, came from all over to see the show and the lights around town. Besides Austin and San Antonio, they were from Houston and Dallas, of course (a busload from Dallas included one of Ruth Blair’s neighbors!), but also New Mexico, Oklahoma, Missouri, Minnesota, and Wisconsin.

“We’re happy to give them some entertainment,” added FUMC Pastor Sid Spiller. “But of course we also have a message to convey, and as I talked with our visitors I was surprised at how often that message got through.

“One man said he was a member of another church, but admitted he had never paid much attention to its teachings. It was obvious he had gotten more of Christ’s message from our short show than he had soaked up in a lifetime in his own church.

“That alone would have been worth all the effort for me. Multiply it more than 1,800 times and you realize what a big impact our little church and our little town have on people’s lives.”