FORTY FORT, Pa. -- For many of the faithful, it is tradition to put a nativity scene up during the Christmas season depicting the birth of Jesus in a manger.
But Lynn Prociak doesn't just put up one manger, she puts up hundreds.
“When my husband and I first got married in 1984, my mom had traveled to California, and she went to Tijuana, and she brought me back a Mexican manger. And we had the standard German manger in my house growing up and when I saw the Mexican one it was just so different. And I started to pay attention to different countries and how they depicted Jesus, and they depicted the shepherds and the Wisemen,” Prociak said.
Some of Lynn’s nativity scenes are grand works of art, some so small the eye can barely see.
But one of her favorites, a one of a kind.
“My son spent a month in the basement creating a nativity for me that he had to cut out everything,” Prociak said.
Now, Lynn’s collection holds over 1,500 nativity scenes from countries across the world.
“Sometimes I get them when I go on trips, sometimes people donate them to me when they're downsizing, and sometimes I'll order them on eBay if I see something special I like or I'll get something from an antique store,” Prociak said.
And all of these scenes require a lot of storage.
"The storage started in my attic, quickly outgrew my attic. We have a storage unit that we store them in, and I think pretty soon we're going to need two storage units,” Prociak said.
If you would like to see part of Lynn’s collection for yourself, you can stop by the Forty Fort Presbyterian Church on Friday, December 13 from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m., Saturday, December 14, 4 p.m. to 8 p.m., or Sunday, December 15, noon to 3 p.m.
There's no cost to enter, but donations are going to the Kirby House in Wilkes-Barre.