Expect to see Charlie the Camel in a manger in Glenville Thursday as students at St. Aloysius School on St. Clair Avenue host their live nativity event.
Sister Mary Jean Raymond, the parish life coordinator at St. Aloysius, said 60 to 70 students will participate in the free Dec. 18 event, which includes the outside tableau as well as cookies, cocoa and neighborhood hospitality.
The students will present the nativity play at 6 p.m. and 7 p.m. Inside the church, musicians and liturgical dancers will perform. Most of the liturgical dancers belong to Our Lady of Fatima Church on Lexington Avenue.
Raymond said Thursday’s celebrations will be “a wonderful way to share the Christmas story with so many people.”
While all St. Aloysius School students are welcome to perform, the nativity scene will not include a live baby: “We use a good-looking doll,” Raymond said with an impish grin.
When the cows come home
The parish has been presenting a live nativity for about eight years, Raymond said. Over the years, animals such as donkeys, sheep, goats and cows have played strong supporting roles in recreating the Bethlehem stable where Christ was born.
The church rents the animals from Spring Mist Farms in Brunswick Hills. “Uncle Dave” Goodyear, a retired Cleveland firefighter, grew up on Spring Mist Farms and told Signal Cleveland they have been offering traveling animal exhibits for more than 60 years (they also offer horse-drawn carriages for weddings and a host of fall activities such as hayrides.)
Last year, he said, they started using a custom-made aluminum trailer to transport animals to live nativity scenes. Charlie the Camel is expected to make the trip, but if Cleveland weather brings us sleet or freezing temperatures, he will bow out. Camels, after all, hail from warmer climates.
His son, Howard Goodyear, said Charlie is popular because most people have never gotten to pet a camel, but Mia the Cow and Maria the Sheep join Pete the Donkey in delighting the participants at live nativity scenes.
The first live nativity was in Greccio, Italy, north of Rome, assembled by St. Francis of Assisi in 1223. Today, like St. Aloysius, churches in Chagrin Falls, Willoughby and Valley View hold live nativity scenes. Raymond said hosting this event brings the Glenville community together at a hectic time of year.
Parish history
Raymond has worked at St. Aloysius since 1981, when she began to teach first grade there. The community has changed over the years, and she now oversees the parish and the school. No priest resides there – the Rev. Dan Schlegel of St. Raphael Church in Bay Village is the presbyterial moderator, which means he and his fellow priests say the church’s one weekly Mass, at 10 a.m. on Sundays.
The Ursuline sister loves to tell visitors about the rich history of the parish and to lead tours of the stunning church – and she looks forward to showing the church to attendees at the live nativity event.
Particularly striking are banners of African Americans on the path to sainthood in the Catholic Church. Sister Thea Bowman and Father Augustus Tolton are two of the more familiar names of holy people who are in the canonization process.
100 years of an architectural gem in Glenville
St. Aloysius parish was formed in 1898 and celebrated its first Mass in 1900. The Italian Renaissance church building opened in 1925. The Romanesque interior features two levels of luminous stained glass windows along with impressive frescoes, intricate tile work, sturdy marble and glowing brass light fixtures. A mammoth pipe organ in the back of the church is reached via stairs graced with decorative ironwork.
When the church opened in 1925, the parish published a leather-bound 62-page booklet with a “poetical history of St. Aloysius Parish.” Accompanied by sepia-toned photos and printed on smooth but surprisingly intact paper, a parishioner named Clara G. Brennan used poetry to tell the story of the parish: “Over one hundred feet was the last purchase made/Connecting the grounds on St. Clair….”
She wrote about the early days, before Glenville became part of Cleveland in 1905: “About that time a great Civic question arose/And a vote proved that people preferred/Annexation–and thus the uniting as one/Of old Glenville and Cleveland occurred.”
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She described – in verse – the design elements of the church building, including detailed paintings and the stained glass windows created by F.X. Zettler of Munich, Germany.
“Down the left aisle we passed, and behold!/New visions of beauty too numerous to count/All about me there, seemed to unfold.”
The book concludes with 45 pages listing the firms that built and furnished the church. One vendor: Votteler-Holtkamp-Sparling Organ Co., established in 1855 in Cleveland. “We hope we have created a gem worthy of its setting,” the company wrote on its page in the souvenir book.
The Hughes-Limbach Co. at 118 S. Clair Ave. E. provided heating boilers that were “automatic, clean, no smoke, no ashes.” Plumbing and heating installations came from the Sweeney & Wise Co. on Carnegie Avenue, and the electric wiring came from E.F. Blazey Electric Co. on Kinsman Road. Architect William C. Jansen had offices on Prospect Avenue.
The rich history of the parish appeals to Mentor artist Barbara Martin, but it’s the friendly community that convinced Martin and her husband to become members. She said the parishioners welcomed them, and she has enjoyed helping with numerous outreach activities. On Thursday, she will help dress the angels performing in the nativity play, and this past Saturday she worked on the annual toy sale.
The parishioners are “just a very dedicated group of people, and they really are full of faith,” Martin said.