Notre Dame restores Nativity scene tradition

By Tanya Connor | The Catholic Free Press

WORCESTER – A treasured tradition, suspended for the past two years because of the coronavirus, returned last week to Notre Dame Long Term Care Center on Plantation Street. Residents, family members and staff gathered to set up the Nativity scene with figures their predecessors painted nearly three decades ago.
Still absent from the scene, though, is Baby Jesus, who won’t appear until midnight on Christmas Eve – with the help of Kathy Donaldson, director of nurses, and her grandchildren, said Mari Ann Paladino, director of marketing and admissions. Also, the four Wise Men are still “traveling” to see Baby Jesus.
“We’re thrilled to be able to resume an annual holiday tradition,” said Karen Laganelli, CEO of Notre Dame Health Care, which includes the Long Term Care Center.
“The difference this year is that we can all gather together in a main common area,” said Ms. Paladino. During the pandemic they placed small Nativity sets on individual nursing units, and the main set on a screened-in porch in the west unit.
This year about 40 of the 123 residents, including several of the 24 Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur who live there, gathered for the blessing of the Nativity, Ms. Paladino said. The service included prayers, a Scripture reading and Advent and Christmas songs.
Setting up the creche “connects all of the staff and residents from the beginning until now,” explained Susan Strandberg, manager of Notre Dame Health Care’s Educational Bridge Program.
“That’s one of the reasons I’m glad the tradition holds, because the original set was made with so much love. Those same figures are present to the new residents,” said Ms. Strandberg, who has worked on the property since before the center opened in 1993.
She told how the tradition started and how there came to be four Wise Men.
Driving in the countryside shortly before Christmas in 1994, Suzanne Gibree, then a nurse at the center, found the ceramic figures in a shop and bought them for the center.
“We set up a painting studio in the staff development office,” the only place with a table long enough, Ms. Strandberg said. “There was a group of staff members and residents who painted the figures.”
Painters included religious sisters and laypeople who lived there, nurses and housekeepers. Cynthia Scola, then a nurse there, took the angel to her mother, an artist, to paint at home. Another artist, Michelle Dillaire, then a nursing assistant there, painted the eyes on most of the figures. Resident Sister Helen Piela, a Sister of Notre Dame, now deceased, was very proud of the donkey she painstakingly painted.
“My favorite is the goat because that’s the one I painted,” Ms. Strandberg confessed. “I tried to carry the goat every year” in the procession to the stable in the main courtyard. (She admits she still pats the goat each year.)
Initially, staff members just placed the figures at the stable and residents would see the scene the next day, she said. But, not too long after the creche’s first Christmas there in 1994, the pastoral care staff started the blessing service to involve more people. It came to include a procession in which residents and staff each carried the figure they’d painted. After they died or moved away, others carried the figures.
Attendees watch the setting up of the figures from the family room that looks out over the courtyard.
“It’s a good place to sit and pray or meditate or just be quiet” throughout Advent and Christmas seasons, Ms. Strandberg noted.
In the beginning, Pastoral Care Director Sister Jeannette Stackhouse asked the maintenance staff to build the wooden stable and arranged where to place it. She is now deceased.
“We’re very traditional,” Ms. Strandberg said. So, each year the creche – even the figures – are displayed in the same place.
Some things have changed, however.
At first, two religious sisters who worked in pastoral care had different – and strong – opinions about whether the Wise Men should be at the stable for Jesus’ birth, Ms. Strandberg said.
“So, it was decided that one year they would stay at the stable and the next year they would ‘travel,’” she said. Their travels were facilitated by staff members who moved them closer to the stable little by little until they arrived on Epiphany. Now they always travel.
One year, a Wise Man was missing, so another was purchased and painted.
“As soon as we went to put it out, we found the other one,” Ms. Strandberg said. Both were displayed, so as not to offend either painter. So, that started a new tradition – there are four Wise Men in the scene.
Ms. Strandberg said that, as needed, figures have been touched up with paint and coated to protect them from the weather, and the stable has been rebuilt – but in the same pattern.

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