Daughters carry on mom’s Christmas tradition

For 27 consecutive years, the people of Lowrys could look forward to a Frances Stephenson Christmas production at the First Baptist Church.

Since 1982, Stephenson had either written, directed, designed or otherwise stage-managed every Christmas musical presented at the church – some of which included a cast of a hundred or more, and one that featured a Christmas parade right down the aisle of the church.

Frances Stephenson

When she passed away on May 2 of last year at age 79, it would be natural to assume that the final curtain had fallen on the Frances Stephenson era.

That assumption would be wrong. Her daughters, Joyce Baker and Nancy Stewart, decided to collaborate on a Christmas play to keep their mother’s tradition in Lowrys alive.

“Momma put months into this play every year, and we agreed it would be a memorial to her,” said Baker in a story published Nov. 30 in the Rock Hill Herald. “She would have wanted us to do this.”

In the daughters’ script, which they titled, “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” their mother is a central figure. Set in 1959, it depicts the true story of a Woman’s Missionary Union meeting that Stephenson hosted in her home.

The 2010 Christmas musical at Lowrys First Baptist Church centered around a 1959 WMU meeting at the home of Frances Stephenson, a beloved church member who directed the church’s Christmas productions for 27 years.

“As children, we remembered cleaning and preparing for the WMU meetings,” Stewart told the Courier. “The stage was was decorated to represent her home. The ladies were dressed in 1959 attire, and refreshments were served typical of that time period. The lesson featured the life of Lottie Moon, missionary to China.”

“This is a tradition here,” Lowrys pastor Mike Shaffer said in the Herald story, “and for Joyce and Nancy to carry it forward – with the rest of us in one role or another – is exactly what Mrs. Stephenson would have wanted.”

Beyond her work with the annual Christmas cantata, Stephenson was an active member of her church, serving as a Sunday school teacher, GA leader, church clerk and historian.