People: Dec. 23, 1985

In the beginning there was Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments. Now the biggest combination of show-biz and biblical spectacle may be The Glory of Christmas–A Living Nativity, which has been staged at the Rev. Robert Schuller’s Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, Calif., every Christmas season since 1981. This year’s three-times-nightly, 75-minute re-enactment of the birth of Jesus boasts Singer Debby Boone, 29, as the Virgin Mary, plus a cast of more than 400 that includes ten flying angels, four white horses, a donkey and three camels. Boone, who is herself expecting this spring, agreed to do the part “because I think it’s one of the most important stories that can ever be told.” But she reports that one moment in the show did not light up her life: when she accidentally knelt in some “well-positioned” camel dung. Sighs Boone: “Whoever said never work with children or animals definitely had some real wisdom there.”