One sure sign of the holiday season is nativity sets — those sculpted scenes of Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus in a manger. They pop up in front of churches and houses, under Christmas trees, just about everywhere. And the University of Dayton’s Marian Library has one of the largest collections of nativity sets in the country on display through Jan. 12, 2024.
The Nativity Collection
Sarah Cahalan is the director of the Marian Library. She says nativity scenes date back to about the 1300s.
“The tradition is that people would set up, in the early days, living nativities with people acting out the parts of the holy family—of Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus, the shepherds, et cetera, right out of the Bible,” she said. “Then, later it became an artistic tradition as well, where people would make statues and paintings, mosaics. When you get to the Renaissance in Italy, for example, people are competing over having the most luxurious, huge, extravagant nativity sets.”
The Marian Library has thousands of nativities, though Cahalan said they can only display a couple dozen at a time.
The collection contains pieces from around the globe. One nativity is by Sidney Matias, a Brazilian artist. He portrays Mary as a native Amazonian in the rainforest. She’s resting in a hammock with the newborn baby in her arms.
But if you walk around to the backside of the sculpture, behind some trees, you’ll see a white businessman in a suit… with horns on his head and dollar signs over his eyes.
“It shows this idea of paradise,” Cahalan said. “And there’s also a bit of a political element to it because he’s very concerned about the degradation of the Amazon. So, there’s some element of ‘Is paradise being lost as well?’”
The materials used to make nativities are diverse, too. There’s a large, fragile, fold out paper nativity that was made in the 1800s in Germany. It’s colorful, and it doesn’t just show a manger, but also the buildings in the town and the trees—a whole landscape.
There’s a recent donation of a giant terra cotta nativity made by Dayton artist Robert Koepnick. It’s a gift from the Sisters of the Precious Blood, a Catholic organization celebrating its centennial this year.
There’s an Amish nativity, a Mexican nativity, and more, as the same scene is celebrated over and over by artists from different cultures.
Juggling for Mary
Last year, in addition to the nativities, the Marian Library had a special show about a juggler who, legend has it, was blessed by Jesus’ mother, Mary.
“The story really goes back 800 years or so,” Cahalan said. “If you go way back, you can start with medieval manuscripts where this story first shows up about a little tumbler or juggler or acrobat who performed for a statue of the Virgin Mary on Christmas Eve.
“Everybody else had other gifts to give, but this was the only thing that he could offer. And in fact, there were people in his community who found it kind of sacrilegious, inappropriate. You know, ‘Why are you juggling for Mary? That's not right. That's not as special as making her a book or performing a concert for her!’
“But the way that the story goes is that at the end of his performance, when he's completely worn out, the statue comes to life and either smiles or she bows down and wipes his brow.
“And the message is that the gifts that we have are the gifts that God wants.”
The story of the juggler has been retold in art and architecture and literature for ages, but it really took off about a century ago, when Jules Massenet turned it into an opera called “Le Jongleur de Notre Dame.”
The opera was a sensation that inspired over a dozen different musical retellings.
African-American composer Ulysses Kay made his own operatic retelling, which was produced at Xavier University in New Orleans and by Opera South, a Black opera company in Jackson, Mississippi, in the 1960s. The library could not find recordings, but they do have photos and sheet music.
In the ‘70s, popular children’s author and illustrator Tommie dePaola turned the legend into a book called “The Clown of God,” which was, perhaps not surprisingly, adapted into a musical in the ‘80s.
The University of Dayton commissioned a new version of the story — a piece for soprano, piano, and clown.
Andrea Chenoweth Wells is a soprano and lecturer at the University of Dayton. She’s also one of the lyricists behind last year's production.
“We came up with an original text based on the story that really explored what we felt when we were performing, what made performing special for us, and how we felt that our performing was itself sort of a spiritual act,” she said. “At the end, the Virgin Mary, when she comes to life, says to Barnaby, the juggler, ‘My child, you are enough, just as you are.’ And we thought, what a positive, wonderful message to share.”
Wells said, “the ultimate purpose of this work is to communicate that each person has a special gift and that your life should be about finding what that gift is and sharing it with other people.”
Support for Culture Couch comes from WYSO Leaders Frank Scenna and Heather Bailey, who are proud to support storytelling that sparks curiosity, highlights creativity and builds community and Ohio Arts Council.
Culture Couch is created at the Eichelberger Center for Community Voices at WYSO.