“A Christmas Memory” was an appropriate title for the BYU-Idaho storytelling class’s performances Dec. 2 and 3 in the Kirkham Arena Theater.

Class member Jennifer Williams, a senior from Sweet Home, Ore., began the event with an original poem entitled “Winter Dreams.”

The group, comprised of six members, next performed a “Mummer’s Play,” a recital that was originally published in 1827. According to Omar Hansen, director of the event, the tradition was for players to go to each house in a village, perform the play and ask for gifts.

The play, which involved Father Christmas, a Turkish knight and a man named Saint George, was a mixture of a Monty Python movie and a musical, with cast members singing “We Wish You A Merry Christmas” at various intervals.

A story, “Christmas Is For Miracles,” was performed next. It was a narrative about a little girl’s desire to prove that Santa was not real and the miracle that made her change to no longer believe in Santa.

Josh Wallace, a senior from Blackfoot, Idaho, reminisced about his Christmas Eve memories with his siblings and the Christmas spent while his mother battled cancer in his original story, “Family Memories.”

The group performed “The Friendly Beasts,” a French Christmas carol and gave a short history of the hymns “Away In A Manger” and “I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day” before singing them, accompanied by Hansen on the guitar.

Hansen also performed an original story entitled “The Christmas I Made My Mother Cry,” recalling returning to his home one holiday to find the Christmas tree lying in the living room “like a homicide victim” because he had forgotten to shut the cat in the basement.

An original song written by one of the students, “Nativity,” concluded the event.

Hansen said he felt the performances went well.

“This class is about creating reader’s theater for church groups and other groups and going back to the basics of telling a story,” Hansen said. “I thought they did great.”