ALTAMONT — Llamas, lambs, and a loving family will recreate a living Nativity scene during the Altamont Victorian Holiday celebration Sunday.

Members of the Altamont Reformed Church and other volunteers will present a 15-minute pageant complete with Scripture readings and Christmas carols. Pastor Robert Luidens will lead the nativity with readings, said director Ellen Howie.

The live Nativity is “a great dimension of the Victorian Holidays,” Howie said. She and her husband, Dick, have coordinated the event for the past five years, and she credited Altamont Community Tradition member Judi Dineen with the idea.

Each year, Teri Conroy of Wunsapana Farm in Altamont and her family bring their llamas to represent the camels of the wise men in the story, and other animals for an authentic recreation, Ellen Howie said.

“They have been great participants,” she said of the Conroys.

The animals have contributed to hilarity during the Nativities of the past, she said.

“One year, I was an angel. I had my back to the llamas, and the llamas were busy chewing my costume,” Howie said.

Another year, a little boy was supposed to hold a lamb on his lap, but he was unable to control it, she said. Howie held the lamb, instead. The unruly lamb made a mess on her twice, she said.

Howie, as a member of the library board at the time, was due at the library immediately after the Nativity.

“I had to come from a living crèche, smelling like a barn, to the library,” Howie remembered. Her sense of humor with Altamont’s Nativity reminded her of a book about an inner-city church’s pageant.

“We have a story to tell, and we’re going to tell it in a way that everyone can hear the Good News,” she recalled of the story. “That’s the spirit in which we present it.”

Howie said that the living Nativity is not a formal presentation.

“We’re happy that we can do it,” she said. “We see it as a great way of reaching out to the community.”

Audience members will receive Christmas carol sheets so they can sing along, but those who come early may be costumed and included, Howie said.

John and Natalie Drahzal borrow costumes from the Hilltowns Players, Howie said. “They have brought down costumes every year,” she said.

Teresa and Mike McNeany portrayed Mary and Joseph in 2011 with their infant son, Zachary, as baby Jesus. The McNeanys will be Mary and Joseph, again, this year, with their new baby, Ethan, in the part of Jesus. Big brother Zachary will join his grandparents as a shepherd this year, Howie said.

“The Girl Scouts have helped us a couple of years, and put on costumes,” Howie said. “Once we get the Holy family, the key components, everybody fills in as shepherds and angels.

“It’s very casual,” Howie continued. “Everybody does a little part of it. It takes a village.”

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Costuming for the Nativity begins at 3:45 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 17, at the Altamont Reformed Church at 129 Lincoln Ave. in the village. The living Nativity begins on the church’s front lawn at 4:15 p.m.