CV NEWS FEED // An insurance company has displayed a life-sized nativity scene in Columbus, Ohio, every Christmas since 1962. But this year, the 20+ life-sized figures will move to the lawn of St. Joseph Cathedral in the same city.
While the scene was once on display in front of the State Auto Insurance building, it can now be found down the same street, in front of the Cathedral.
The change in tradition followed a change in leadership, in which Liberty Mutual Group took ownership of State Auto. The company also donated $250,000 to help preserve the life-sized display and the tradition itself for the coming years.
State Auto began the tradition of a “Christmas Corner” in 1931, when the founder, Bob Pein, wanted to give back to the community. Pein called the Nativity Display a “Christmas card to the community.”
The company first donated it to the local Museum of Catholic Art and History, which in turn donated it to St. Joseph Cathedral.
“I grew up going to St. Patrick’s Church Downtown,” Shawn Kenney, executive director of the museum, told The Columbus Dispatch. “We lived on the East Side, so we always got off the Broad Street exit. I would see the scaffolding going up and then the Kings going up and then the vegetation…. It was always a tradition watching this Nativity going up. I never thought we’d own it.”
The Nativity scene has been on display at the Cathedral since the day after Thanksgiving.
“We rejoice at the opportunity to preserve this display and bring it to the people of central Ohio for generations to come,” Bishop Karl Fernandes of the Diocese of Columbus stated in a diocese press release. “Such a momentous display of a vital part of the chronicle of God’s love for all people, when He humbled Himself to share in our humanity so we can share in His divinity, visibly invites us into a deeper relationship with our Lord.”