Crèches from Africa, India, and Europe tell Christmas story with unique cultural flair
By Agnieszka Krawczynski
VANCOUVER
The clay figures of St. Joseph wearing a sombrero and the Virgin Mary in braids with blue bows watch over the Infant Jesus, part of a unique collection of nativity scenes amassed by Bishop David Monroe.
Bishop Monroe, who recently retired as bishop of Kamloops, has been collecting and giving away crèches for more than 14 years and has owned as many as 60 at once.
“To see how people express the same event, they’re all so different,” Bishop Monroe told The B.C. Catholic as he pulled wooden carvings, stone figures, and metal statuettes out of one of six boxes that currently house his vast collection.
“It is quite amazing. None of them are the same.” His nativity scenes come from as far away as China, India, Madagascar, Mexico, and Tanzania; he’s picked many of them up in his travels.
“I go around and see what I can find in different places.” For example, he enjoys making pilgrimages to Mexico for the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe and often finds unique nativity scenes there. That’s where the sombrero-clad St. Joseph came from, as did a tiny set of the Holy Family, goats and sheep woven out of straw.
Others he has acquired as gifts. A stone nativity scene he received from India depicts Mary and Joseph in traditional Indian clothing, while a set made of metal from Africa creates the same scene, but in entirely different cultural circumstances. A closer look reveals Jesus is sucking on his fingers.
Bishop Monroe owns a dark-stained wooden carving of the nativity from Tanzania and dozens of sets from Europe, Peru, and the United States. One of his most recent is a set of ornately painted wooden figures of a European-looking Holy Family from Russia.
“When I was in Kamloops, in the rectory of the cathedral, I would have these displayed all over the house, in different places,” said Bishop Monroe.
“On New Year’s Day, I’d have an open house in that rectory. I would give people a program talking about each one of them, the artists, etc.” Many of his neighbours would visit to view his ever-changing collection of nativity scenes.
The largest set, from Northern Italy, contains 43 wooden figures and mounts on a 7-foot long board. The smallest crèche is sweetly contained in half of a walnut shell.
Bishop Monroe retired this year and moved to Vancouver, where he continues looking for ways to share the multi-cultural collection of crèches with the public. Several of them, including a nativity set he built himself, are on display at the John Paul II Pastoral Centre.
Another, which he gave to Westminster Abbey in Mission, is a single-piece wood carving of a tree with about 20 figures including the Holy Family enmeshed in the tree’s roots and branches.
“It is phenomenal,” he said. “Everything has significance, if done properly.”
One of his favourite pieces is by B.C. folk artist Hermann Edler. In it, a star shoots over the heads of Mary and Joseph as they hold the Infant Jesus, wrapped in swaddling clothes, in their arms. A donkey and an ox peer at them from behind feeding troughs.
“Joseph stands there and he has a little pouch on the side, under his arms, because he feeds the family. It is a bread bag that he is wearing,” he said. Onlookers will also notice that the shooting star has six points. “I always put the Jewish symbol in it because they’re a Jewish family.”
Edler started creating wooden crèches when he immigrated to Canada from Austria about 20 years ago.
“All of the life that was going on when I was growing up on the farm, you have in a crèche,” he said. Some imaginative artists include more characters besides those mentioned in the Gospels. In large sets, one might see townspeople talking, children playing, or women carrying laundry or baskets of apples on their heads.
“It’s a fantastic still-life of real life. Walk through a crèche landscape and see what’s going on. Where is there a shepherd sleeping or some cows running around? You close your eyes and you can go into it,” he said. “It’s a magical place.”
