Christmas Spirit Reborn at Church’s Nativity Scene : Thousands Come to See Display Imbued With Parishioner’s Disney Touch

The sweet smell of noble fir trees tweaked their noses, more than 6,000 twinkling lights filled their vision, and the graceful shapes of the nearly life-size Nativity figures awed parishioners arriving for Christmas Eve Mass at St. Boniface Catholic Church. The Nativity scene, the creation of Keith Stievo, a church member and entertainment supervisor at Disneyland, has become so renowned in recent years that it attracts an estimated 15,000 people from throughout the county.

“We put a little theater into it,” Stievo said. “We hope the environment will bring people closer to God.”

At work, Stievo, 45, is responsible for Disneyland’s special shows, parades, fireworks and atmospheric characters like Mickey Mouse. On his off hours, however, he serves as the art director at St. Boniface, where for the last 10 years he has overseen something he calls Project Nativity; the annual creation of the Nativity scene.

“It provides a visual aid,” said Father John Lenihan, pastor of the 4,300-family church. “It’s not just showy; it’s spiritual. It can inspire prayer.”

Said Maria Phillips of Garden Grove: “When the lights come on, it’s phenomenal. It just seems to bring it all to life, the Christmas story and the majesty of it. It gives you goose shivers.”

Stievo first got involved in the annual project when church members, hearing of his Disneyland background, asked him to take a crack at improving the church’s Nativity scene, which was then so small that it was visible only from the first few rows of the 1,000-seat church. “When I started, they had a pitiful display,” Stievo admits.

He quickly changed that, first by moving the display onto an elevated stage, then by gradually enlarging and improving it. Four years ago, he helped persuade the church to shell out more than $20,000 for a set of four-foot-high, polyvinyl Nativity figures crafted by an Italian family, the Fontaninis, who are famous for their work. The set consists of statues of Mary, Joseph, a shepherd boy, three wise men, several animals and, of course, the baby Jesus. Next Stievo designed an eight-foot wooden manger around which to place the statues.

And finally he crafted a set for the whole thing, adorned by real hay, pine cones and noble firs and strewn with 6,000 to 10,000 twinkling lights. “We’re trying to evoke an emotion,” Stievo said, “to create the spirit of Christmas.”

Parishioners seeing the display for the first time Thursday at the church’s 5 p.m. Mass ooohed and aaahed.

“It’s beautiful,” said Larry Ryan of Anaheim as he stood gazing at the scene with his 2-year-old granddaughter, Alyssa. “Smelling the pine trees kind of enforces that it’s Christmas. It strengthens my religion.”

Fulllerton resident Susan Meyer, observing the scene with her two grandsons, said, “It makes me feel that life is worth living; that there is hope of a better place.”

Traditionally, the display, which takes the art director and eight volunteers up to 40 hours to construct, is not completed until Christmas Eve.

“We do our best to conceal the magic of Christmas until the very last moment,” says Stievo, who spent two nights this week working on the display into the wee hours. “We try not to give it away.”

The payoff, he says, is the fact that from Christmas Eve--with its four Masses in English, Spanish and Vietnamese--through the first Sunday of the new year when the scene is dismantled, an estimated 15,000 people are expected to see it.

In fact, he says, the Nativity scene has become so popular that for two years running, pictures of it have been featured on the church’s fast-selling Christmas cards.

But there is one other payoff that Stievo considers even more important.

“I sort of feel that this is my ticket to heaven,” he said. “I do this for the greater glory of God. My friends say that when I die, God will put me in charge of decorating heaven for Christmas.”