Each one tells a story, the same age-old story. Yet each Nativity scene in Kathy Wilson’s prodigious collection has a story of its own.
“These are from Waterford, from Ireland,” Wilson said as I admired one set’s exquisite crystal figures — Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus, kings, angels and animals — all arranged on a mirror base.
She and her late husband, Jim Wilson, twice visited the factory in southeast Ireland where Waterford Crystal is made. Stopping to explain where she’d acquired creche after creche, the Everett woman shared memories connected to travels with her husband, who died in 2000.
“This one is so special,” Wilson, 71, said about one Nativity scene in a hollowed-out coconut, part of her kitchen decor this Christmas. “Jim was sick, and we went to Hawaii,” she said.
Although trips took them far from home, Wilson’s life has been centered around her Catholic church, Immaculate Conception in Everett, their home and family business, all within a block of each other. For decades, they operated Wilson’s Delicatessen, a small market on Rucker Avenue in north Everett.
The couple met as children. Kathy Padovan was 11 when her family moved to Everett from California. Jim Wilson was in her fifth-grade class at Immaculate Conception School. They married in 1960. Planning to stay a year or so, they bought the house across from the store from Jim Wilson’s mother. The couple stayed more than 40 years and raised four children.
In the View Ridge neighborhood home where she now lives, Wilson has about 200 manger scenes, so many she’s lost count. It takes a week to put them up. More than 100 are on display, on mantelpieces, tables and shelves that hold candlesticks and family pictures the rest of the year.
Her collection contains valuable treasures. From Germany, there’s a large Nativity set of M.I. Hummel figurines, childlike pieces painted pastel pinks and blues. Other manger scenes, unique and some homemade, are no less precious to Wilson.
One, a kindergarten creation, is a small paper bag turned on its side, with a cut-out paper star and a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup wrapper for a cradle. “Guess what this one’s made of,” said Wilson, holding a small set of glass characters with round bodies. “I don’t know, ceramic?” I answered. “Marbles,” she said.
She has a manger in a matchbox, the Nativity painted on a thimble, a stuffed set suitable for child’s play, and what she calls “orphans,” one with the baby Jesus missing and another where “Joseph took off.”
When I visited, Wilson was about to host a Christmas lunch for friends. Among them was the Rev. John Renggli, Immaculate Conception’s pastor for six years in the 1980s. The priest once told Wilson he had about 20 Nativity scenes. “I started to laugh,” she said. Renggli now serves at a church in Spanaway, but came north Tuesday to see his old friend and her collection.
One of Wilson’s figures has quite a story, and it gave Renggli a good surprise. He was quietly commenting on each manger scene when he spotted in Wilson’s living room a nearly life-size figure of the infant Jesus. With loud enthusiasm, he boomed out, “There’s the Jesus from Immaculate!”
Wilson retold the story she’d shared earlier with me.
The Christmas she and her future husband were in ninth grade, Jim Wilson had the duty of packing away the manger. “He remembered putting it away in the old church, which had a hall and a stage,” Wilson said. The following Christmas, the Nativity scene was found, but the figure of the Christ child was missing. “So they bought another Jesus,” Wilson said.
The old church, built on Hoyt Avenue in 1904, was replaced by a new Immaculate Conception Church in 1967. Found tucked away before the old building was demolished was the lost Jesus figure. Kathy and Jim Wilson paid $25 for it at a fundraising auction.
Wilson laughed remembering how the late Monsignor John Mattie, for 21 years a gruff but beloved pastor at the parish, marveled that “some dumb lady” had paid so much for it. She said her husband told him, “That dumb lady was my wife.”
It’s easy for Wilson to share stories about her collection. Not so easy is talking about their spiritual significance. Her Catholic faith is strong and deep. Belief has sustained her through life’s trials — the loss of her parents, serious injuries when she was hit by a car while crossing the street near her store, and her husband’s death.
Put faith into words? Wilson tried.
“It’s hard to explain faith. It’s a crutch, but it isn’t,” she said. “If I didn’t have it, I couldn’t get through a day.”
Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlstein@heraldnet.com.
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