By Gail Wood
As a kid growing up in Olympia, George Coley remembers going with his parents to see Christmas Island in the 1970s.
By then Christmas Island – a nativity scene with life-sized figures and over 10,000 lights – had already moved from Capitol Lake to the South Sound Mall.
“It was so amazing,” Coley said.
Now, 55 years after Leonard Huber created Christmas Island and it was placed in the middle of Capitol Lake, Coley is the keeper of the Christmas display. As pastor of Maytown Assembly of God, Christmas Island is on display at his church for the second year (2920 Tierney Street, take exit 95 from I-5).
“We’re trying to fill out Maytown as the Bethlehem of Thurston Country,” Coley said. “Come see the Christ child.”
It’s a bight and colorful reminder that Jesus is the reason for the season.
Originally when it first went up in 1959, the manger scene was on a barge and was reported to have nearly 20,000 lights. With the help of the Army Corp of Engineers at Fort Lewis the nativity was placed on a barge on Capitol Lake. Now, it’s on a 100-foot stretch of property by the Maytown church and has several thousand lights. A 12-foot by 16-foot star is on a 40-foot pole and can be seen from blocks away.
“We love doing it,” said Carolyn Chester, Maytown’s Assembly of God’s assistant pastor. “The church has really taken it to heart. It’s like one of our major ministries because people can see it by driving by.”
After Christmas Island left the South Sound Mall and sat in storage for several years, Coley, with the help and encouragement of his dad, got the Christmas display out of storage in 1998. Coley was lead pastor at the Olympia Metro Church at the time. For 10 years, the church put up the display every Christmas.
“As a church we’re a steward of this,” Coley said. “We put it out and encourage churches to own this thing – to bring groups, come and enjoy it.”
Next to the lit manger scene, Coley’s church has a building they call the Fireside Barn. On weekends, they serve coffee and cookies for people who stop for an up-close view of the Christmas display.
“People can stop and get out and come into the Fireside Barn,” Coley said. “And they can just stop and slow down and enjoy the sights and the sounds and the lights. It’s a great evangelist tool.”
It’s a big project for the Maytown church, which for Sunday morning services has about 50 people. Putting up the manager scene began several months before Christmas. This year, a big project included switching the power source from a diesel generator to an electric hookup.
The Huber family had been storing the lights and figures in a storage unit. Because of the storage costs and a desire to have the manager on display again, they talked with Coley when he approached them. The family agreed to let the church continue the tradition of the display on one condition. It can’t be on display outside of the county.
In a video documentary, Leonard Huber referred to Christmas Island as a “sacred scene” and a “living scene”.
“So every year we try to add something,” Chester said. “We have many of the original pieces. A lot of the pieces were made out of similar materials used in airplanes.”
That’s fortunate because the manager scene survived a warehouse fire years ago. Over the years, Coley has had to redesign Christmas Island to fit the space he had available. Each year the display includes a backdrop of Christmas trees.
The tradition of Christmas Island continues in large part because of the vision of the church. When it left the South Sound Mall, Coley knew he needed to do something.
“We were like this is crazy. Where is that thing?” Coley said. “So we decided, myself and my dad, we were going to find out what happened to it and see if we could figure out a way to bring it back, and the relatives, once we found out who had it, were very gracious. They were going to release it to the church as long as we kept it in Thurston County and offered it as a free outreach to the community at Christmas time. We agreed to that. So that’s when we received it.”
Christmas Island can be found off I-5 at Exit 95. The Maytown Assembly of God is located at 2920 Tierney Street.
