In keeping with the two previous years, the Heritage Center’s Christmas event this year will feature dramatized tours of our campus. In 2022 and 2023, these tours followed a story entitled Watchman Tell Us of the Night, set Christmas Eve 1864. This year, however, “A Heritage Christmas” will feature a tour entitled This Solid Ground, which is set in 1871 and is a sequel to Watchman Tell Us of the Night!
In This Solid Ground, visitors will progress through four different buildings on our campus, each with a scene that brings to life what Christmas Eve in 1871 might have been like for Brethren and Mennonites in the Shenandoah Valley. Each scene features different characters (many of which are the same characters from Watchman) who are continuing to rebuild their lives after the Civil War and are grappling with issues that challenged Anabaptists in the 1870’s: migration of friends and family away from the Valley, and tensions over church practices that would eventually lead to divisions in the years to come.
This Solid Ground is written by Liz Beachy Hansen, who also wrote the script for Jordan’s Stormy Banks, a play commissioned by the Heritage Center in 2002. These special tours will take place on December 14, 15, 21 and 22, from 2:30 to 5:30 pm each evening. Tours will begin every 15 minutes, with a maximum of 10 persons per group. A reservation is required to participate in the event.
Online registration is free, but donations will be taken at the event; our suggested donation is $10 per adult, $5 per student, and children 5 and under free. All proceeds will support the Brethren & Mennonite Heritage Center.
Please register for a tour using this form:
Many thanks to the business sponsors who have helped make this year’s event possible!
