A Night in Bethlehem

The children of California’s oldest Armenian Church will celebrate Christmas 2024 by helping young brothers and sisters in the Republic of Armenia.

The First Armenian Presbyterian Church of Fresno will welcome the Birth of the Christ Child with the Nativity Play, “A Night in Bethlehem,” at 4 p.m. on Saturday, December 21, 2024. The 127th Annual observance will take place at the Church Campus, 430 South First Street at Historic Huntington Boulevard near Downtown Fresno.

This modern recounting of the Nativity Story will be presented by the youngest members of the Church Family, many of them part of the Sixth Generation of Armenian-Americans to worship at FAPC. The children’s performance will conclude with a seasonal dinner, the sale of Christmas Market Goods, and a free Sing-A-Long Christmas Concert by the FAPC Worship Team. All proceeds from the dinner, market sales, and Concert offering will be donated to the youth transportation project of the FAPC sister congregation, the Evangelical Church of Armenia in Goris. Reverend Sargis Ochinyan is Pastor of the Goris Congregation.

Goris is the second largest city in Syunik Province located in the south of the Republic of Armenia and is situated 158 miles from the national capital of Yerevan. The municipality encompasses a number of villages and the transportation project will secure a van bus for youth to attend school and enjoy essential educational opportunities.

The word “Advent” means “coming” or “arrival.” During Advent Season, Christian Churches celebrate the arrival of Jesus of Nazareth in Bethlehem of Judea and watch with hope for his coming again. The 2024 Advent Season will include a 10:30 a.m. Sunday Service with Scripture Readings, the Lighting of the Traditional Advent Candle, Worship Messages in the Armenian and English languages, vocal and instrumental Christmas music, and pastoral and community prayers. December 22 is known as the Fourth Sunday of Advent 2024. A Christmas Eve Candlelight Service will take place at 5 p.m. on December 24. The services and Nativity play are all open to the public.

The Fresno Congregation first celebrated the Advent Season on Friday, December 24, 1897 in Major Daniel Nicholls’s Hall at the intersection of Mariposa and Broadway. The 19th Century Fresno Morning Republican covered the service and reported the Hall was “well filled by members of the Sunday school and church. The program consisted of music, recitations and a distribution of presents. There was a Christmas tree and every one received some small gift.”

More information about the 2024 FAPC Advent Schedule is available by visiting the FAPC Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/FAPCFresno.

Forty immigrants from Marsovan chartered the Fresno congregation in a rented hall on July 25, 1897. The boyhood church of authors William Saroyan and A.I. Bezzerides and filmmaker J. Michael Hagopian, FAPC today is a multigenerational evangelical congregation drawn from the Old and New Worlds.

The FAPC Leadership Team includes Reverend Gregory Vahack Haroutunian, Senior Pastor and Mrs. Nataly Wairdian, Director of Children’s Ministries.

FAPC is a member congregation of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC) and the Armenian Evangelical Union of North America.