Western North Carolina’s Weary Hearts Rejoice for Christmas

After Hurricane Helene, the deadliest and most damaging storm to ever hit North Carolina, local churches, musicians, professional Santas, and even tree farms are finding holiday cheer despite destruction still surrounding them.

The devastated region is one of the nation’s largest producers of Christmas trees. Flooding forced Avery Farms in Western North Carolina to remove all 60,000 of its Christmas trees, but it is selling “hurricane trees,” where the damaged branches on the bottom halves of the trees were removed, leaving long, exposed trunks with bulbs of surviving evergreen on top.

The Christmas season in North Carolina is like those hurricane trees: celebrating the birth of Jesus, but with a lot of branches missing.

Churches in the mountainous region are helping people find homes in time for the holidays, providing presents to parents who may not be able to buy gifts for their children, connecting campers to septic systems, and acquiring Christmas trees for those in need.

Some congregations that lost their church buildings have moved in with other churches across denominational lines and are planning blended Christmas services.

Local Christians see some parallels between Mary and Joseph having no shelter at Jesus’ birth and many in their congregations being without homes after the storm.

“All of these things are small metaphors at Christmas,” said Scott Rogers, the executive director of Asheville Buncombe Community Christian Ministry (ABCCM), a longtime Christian shelter and recovery ministry.

One of the older ministries in Asheville, ABCCM is helping coordinate recovery efforts from national groups and churches from other parts of the US. “There is room at the inn for our modern-day Mary and Josephs and families,” Rogers said.

The loss is ever-present. When Jeff Dowdy drives to the church he pastors, First Baptist Church Swannanoa, he still sees overturned trucks, houses shoved off their foundations, and piles of debris. His church has been a hub for recovery efforts in Swannanoa, a working-class community near Asheville that experienced some of the worst of Helene’s destruction.

Five families in Dowdy’s church lost their homes, while other homes had heavy damage. Some families are living out of campers or with family members elsewhere. At the holidays, he said, families are together “but not in the way you thought it was going to be.”

But the church is preparing some holiday cheer of its own, hosting a Christmas boutique where parents can “shop” for free gifts for their kids, paying in the form of donations if they wish. The boutique is by appointment only to manage demand (two of the days in December were already completely booked), and the church provides guidance in English and Spanish.

Each person visiting the boutique sits down with a pastor and shares what their needs are—whether physical or spiritual—and then the church assesses what it can do to help. The guests can also leave with handmade quilts. Someone dropped off 400 handmade quilts at the church, and the church members wrapped each one.

“They’re beautiful,” Dowdy said.

Dowdy’s church also bought 40 Christmas trees from two local tree farms damaged from Helene, including Avery Farms, to give away to community members in need.

The family-owned farm, which also goes by Trinity Tree Company, said on its website that the owners lost their home in addition to the entire farm: “Throughout the years we have faced many hardships, but the Lord has always made a way for us, just as He will do this time.”

“The area has been decimated economically,” said Todd Royal, the pastor of Fairview Baptist Church, another hard-hit community near Asheville, the state’s most populous city to experience Helene’s destruction. Many businesses were destroyed and are discovering that insurers won’t cover damage from floods or mudslides.

Right after the storm, Fairview Baptist, like so many churches in the area, became a way station for emergency supplies. But now people who are without a paycheck because of the storm are coming to the church for diapers, baby formula, coats, and food.

Dozens of families lost homes in the church’s small community. Eleven members of one extended family died in an area near Fairview known as Craigtown. One of the surviving family members came to volunteer at the church after the storm, Royal said.

As some people have moved into campers, Fairview Baptist has also helped about a half dozen of them connect the hard piping from their new camper homes to a septic system.

Despite the storm, the 65-member church continued its Operation Christmas Child program through Samaritan’s Purse, putting together more than 1,500 shoeboxes full of gifts over the course of three “packing parties” at the church.

“The building was full of excitement and life. … It was just a sweetness to it that I’ve not seen thus far, that’s different than other years,” said Royal. “I’m grateful the Lord has loved on us and given us some good work to do, and I hope it’ll lead to a great moving of the Lord in our community that has been needed for a while.”

The Asheville Symphony Orchestra had its first concert since the storm in late November, performing George Friderich Handel’s Messiah.

The run of three Messiah performances was sold out. The symphony’s music director, Darko Butorac, told CT that at one evening performance the audience was so enthusiastic that the musicians did an encore of the “Hallelujah” chorus and the audience joined in singing.

“It was a very special moment, the community coming together through the beauty of this incredible piece of music,” Butorac said.

Considering the loss the region had experienced, Butorac personally found the beginning of the Messiah moving. The first sung words of Handel’s piece are from Isaiah 40: “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people.”

Dowdy in Swannanoa is also focusing on Isaiah in his preaching this Christmas season. He noted the Old Testament prophecies are full of expectation and longing for the Messiah. He thinks about that with the slow years of recovery ahead.

“It does make us long for better days, expecting Jesus,” he said. “That’s what we’re offering to people, is that hope.”

A Mountain Pastor-and-Santa Rebuilds His Church

Methodist pastor Mike Marcela is in his tenth year working a side job as a professional Santa Claus in Western North Carolina.

But this Christmas season he is also working to rebuild the church he leads, Valle Crucis United Methodist Church, after Hurricane Helene’s destruction. Many in the region are welcoming Christmas as a time that captures both darkness and great light—a longing for a coming Savior, renewal, and recovery.

As Santa, he works at the Tweetsie Railroad theme park and other places in the area near Boone, North Carolina—alongside his wife, who plays Mrs. Claus.

Marcela, who sports a long white beard, has already talked to thousands of children in the region in his role as Santa. He expected children to come to him asking for presents to replace things they lost in Helene. But the children haven’t brought up the storm to him.

“They’re just excited about Christmas,” he said in an interview. “It’s good to hear kids are focused on … being kids and having fun.”

Valle Crucis United Methodist Church, in the mountains near Boone, is starting its third debris pile from the wreckage of its building.

The church was founded in 1862 and has seen floods before, but nothing like Helene. Several feet of water ripped into the church building, requiring about $400,000 of repairs, which the local Methodist district and regional conference are planning to cover.

“We’re all disheartened by the building, but no one is so disheartened [that] we retreated to a corner,” Marcela said.

With some help from volunteer groups like Samaritan’s Purse, Baptists on Mission, and the United Methodist Committee on Relief, the Methodist congregation is now in the middle of ripping up all the church’s floors, removing mud from underneath everything, and fixing its newly sinking foundation. The church fellowship hall is mucked out and awaiting mold remediation. Soon the church’s stained-glass windows will be removed while the foundation is fixed.

“I’ve learned a lot about old church renovation that I never really wanted to know,” Marcela said.

The congregation is a close-knit group of about 23 people who have lived in the community their whole lives. Some of the men in the congregation are farmers and contractors, and after the storm they gassed up excavators and bulldozers to help clear the way for people trapped in their driveways and houses.

No one in the church lost their homes, but some had damage, and farmers in the church lost all their fencing and are rebuilding. One congregant’s driveway is still blocked with storm debris.

The church carried on its usual outreach ministries without a building: Members did a coat drive at a local school, and they’re helping put on a “cookies with Santa” event for students at another, with Marcela working as the Santa. They usually do the cookie event at the public elementary school across the street from the church, but the school was flooded too.

“Our congregation realizes that a church is not a building but the church is a congregation,” Marcela said.

The church has been sharing a sanctuary with Holy Cross Episcopal Church up the road. Now, the Methodists worship at 9 a.m., and the Episcopalians worship at 11 a.m. The Episcopal sanctuary has an organ, which the Methodist church’s pianist is enjoying but which has been an adjustment for the Methodist congregation—“a little more formal sounding,” Marcela said.

The Episcopal priest told Marcela the Methodists could use their Advent wreath to light candles on Sundays, but Marcela decided to put up a Nativity set instead to try something new.

Each week, instead of lighting the candle, the church is bringing different characters to the manger—animals one week, shepherds another. Marcela does an Advent reading connected to the service’s Scripture as they do the Nativity.

The two congregations have shared meals together since the storm, and they’re planning to do a Christmas Eve service together. The Episcopal youth group is leading lessons and carols at the service, and then Marcela will lead Communion.

“A storm is a storm, but it’s not ever going to be bigger than God,” Marcela said. “We’ve seen God moving everywhere. That makes this time a little more special.”