{"id":61536,"date":"2025-12-15T17:59:14","date_gmt":"2025-12-15T17:59:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/61536\/"},"modified":"2025-12-15T17:59:14","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T17:59:14","slug":"la-crosse-church-sees-2400-experience-bethlehem-event","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/61536\/","title":{"rendered":"La Crosse church sees 2,400 experience Bethlehem event"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over 2,000 people traveled to Bethlehem this weekend, without ever leaving the city of La Crosse.<\/p>\n

Those visitors attended the two-day Bethlehem event at English Lutheran, where volunteer actors recreated a street scene from the time that Jesus was born. <\/p>\n

Most of the performers played the roles of merchants and other townspeople, as well as Roman soldiers. <\/p>\n

Live animals, including a llama and donkeys, were also part of the street scene.<\/p>\n

\"\"Kids pretty a llama during a Bethlehem event at English Lutheran in La Crosse on Dec. 14, 2025.<\/p>\n

The event is designed to be interactive, where visitors can get artificial gold coins to purchase food and other items. Guests had to register with the taxman when coming into town.<\/p>\n

English Lutheran begins planning several months ahead of time for the Bethlehem event, which occurs once every four years. <\/p>\n

Event volunteer Nikki Pohnl said the recreation of Bethlehem is too large to attempt every December. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt takes a lot to put this all together,\u201d Pohnl said. \u201cWe talked about having it every three years, but then we hit election years sometimes, so the four-year, every four years seems to be a pretty good pattern.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Guests take part in the Bethlehem Event at English Lutheran in La Crosse on Dec. 14, 2025.<\/p>\n

Pohnl added that the Bethlehem street scene inside the church drew about 2,400 visitors on Saturday and Sunday. Plus, about 60 people were needed each day to play the inhabitants of Bethlehem and carry out technical duties. <\/p>\n

Volunteers worked since October to build the replica homes and stores within the church, located near UW-La Crosse.<\/p>\n

Like this:<\/p>\n

Like Loading…<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Over 2,000 people traveled to Bethlehem this weekend, without ever leaving the city of La Crosse. Those visitors…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61168,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154],"class_list":{"0":"post-61536","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bethlehem","8":"tag-bethlehem","9":"tag-bethlehem-headlines","10":"tag-bethlehem-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61536\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}