Margi Colerick has taken the collection of nativity scenes to a new level, with 60 tubs full of sculptures weighing around 1,500 pounds. “It takes two weeks, several days, to put up, then we set up the display, then several days to take down, then I’m exhausted,” she told Fox 4 News
Colerick has been showing off her impressive nativity scene collection for around 20 years. Her experience with nativity scenes dates back to 1960.
“Mother was a professional artist; she decided that for her church bazaar that she was going to make a nativity,” she said. “One of the kings is holding a shotgun shell, because my dad was a duck hunter and she had it around the house. Just the right size.”
Colerick was a pastor at a church in the Kansas City area. “What do you get the preacher for Christmas?” she asked “Oh, let’s give her a nativity.’ And about 2004, I realized I had an awful lot of nativities.”
The collection has been a labor of love for 78-year-old Colerick, who just concluded a community sale. “For the first hour and a half we were open, people were like frenzied piranhas just grabbing everything,” Colerick told the Johnson County Post. She reports she sold 272 of the nativities this year, more than half of her collection. Some of the proceeds will go to Merriam Christian Church’s outreach programs. Her daughter Robin is a pastor there.
“They mean something to me, and it means something to me that selling them can help somebody else,” she said “I like that. They work with the poor and with Johnson County Christmas Bureau, and they have a food little pantry out in front, and they work with the school systems and two nursing homes here.”
Colerick hopes the nativities go to families that will treasure them as much as she has.
One woman at the sale was in tears because she found a matching set to one that one of her twin daughters was given. “Now they both have one,” the woman told KSHB.
“I will be happy if people take them home, that want them,” she said. “I always say if the nativity winks at you, then it’s for you. And you take it home, and you love it in your own family, and let it become part of the Christmas tradition.”
The nativity scene collection is on display at Merriam Christian Church through Sunday.
–Alan Goforth