Nativity scenes, live and otherwise, seem like they’ve been part of the observance of Christmas forever, and there’s a great reason for that. The roots of the tradition go back 800 years to 1223, when St. Francis of Assisi delivered Mass in a cave chapel in Greccio, Italy, beside a simple representation of the Bethlehem manger scene with barnyard animals and a straw-lined crèche (or crib).

This holiday season, the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration, the Franciscan Spirituality Center, Viterbo University and Mayo Clinic Health System have joined forces to celebrate the 800^th anniversary of that influential day in Greccio. The array of observances includes Franciscan Night on Sunday, Dec. 10, at Rotary Lights in La Crosse’s Riverside Park, featuring a performance in the Ice Castle by Viterbo’s Ninth Street Singers at 5:30 p.m. and distributing 500 custom-made wooden ornaments depicting the Nativity.

Franciscan Night won’t feature a re-enactment of St. Francis’s historic moment in Greccio — a live nativity display has been part of Rotary Lights from the beginning — but there will be Franciscans portraying St. Francis and St. Clare, one of the first followers of St. Francis.

Sister Laura Nettles, FSPA, who joined the faculty of the Viterbo religious studies department in 2009, has been to Greccio multiple times and found it profoundly inspiring. “I think there’s something special about being anywhere that Francis has been. His story comes alive,” said Nettles, who is Viterbo’s executive director for mission and social justice.

Nettles noted that St. Francis, who died in 1226, was nearing the end of his own story in 1223 when he arrived in Greccio, halfway between Rome, where he had just been to see Pope Honorius III, and Assisi. Physically exhausted and emotionally drained, St. Francis was worried about the institutionalization of the order of friars he had founded and that the order was losing sight of its core values (poverty, chastity and obedience).

As Christmas drew near, St. Francis stopped in Greccio, a community of strong faith. Feeling compelled to emphasize the profundity of God taking the form of a vulnerable baby born in the most humble of circumstances, St. Francis told a friend of his, a wealthy nobleman, about his desire to create a live nativity scene that would give worshippers in Greccio the same sense of awe in the Incarnation that he had.

According to the biographies of St. Francis by Thomas of Celano and St. Bonaventure, the friend came through with an ox, a donkey, and a straw-filled manger that St. Francis used as an altar to say Mass. Their accounts spread the word of what St. Francis had done that day in Greccio, spurring the nativity scene tradition that spans the globe.

“As Franciscans, the Incarnation is a significant event. It is for all of Christianity, but for Franciscans it’s extra special,” said Nettles, who has a collection of miniature nativity scenes she has acquired in her global travels to India, South Korea, Singapore, Romania, Mexico, Peru and, of course, Greccio. The one from Peru is part of the “Greccio at Christmas” exhibit of artistic nativity scenes at Viterbo’s San Damiano Chapel.

“What I love about them is how they represent the people in the places I’ve been,” Nettles said. “I’m fascinated by how the indigenous people depict themselves in the nativity story, so I make sure they are representative of the culture.”

It’s hard to say what St. Francis would think of today’s elaborate nativity scenes, but in his Mass at Greccio he was going for something simple and visceral to give people a physical sense of the coming of Christ, said Michael Krueger, who will be on the Rotary Lights grounds portraying St. Francis. “He wasn’t seeking out perfection. The story of Greccio is the story of the messiness of God entering into our lives.”

Krueger graduated with a bachelor’s degree from Viterbo in 2010, majoring in ministry and Spanish, and earned a Master of Arts in Servant Leadership degree from Viterbo in 2015. These days Krueger is practically on the Viterbo campus again. He has an office just across the street from Viterbo in St. Rose Convent, where he serves as director of the FSPA affiliation program, which gives lay people the opportunity to take a journey of faith similar to the FSPA sisters, following the way of St. Francis and St. Clare.

Krueger will be joined at Rotary Lights by Cindy Sjolander portraying St. Clare. Another pair, Priamo and Meg Paulino, also will take a shift portraying the saints at Sunday’s Rotary Lights Franciscan Night.

As part of the 800^th anniversary celebration, Mayo Clinic will bathe its Center for Advanced Medicine and Surgery building in purple light starting Sunday evening, baby items are being collected, and a nativity mural being painted at the Franciscan Spirituality Center will be displayed at San Damiano Chapel.

Details on these activities and more can be found on Viterbo's Celebrating Christmas at Greccio webpage.