Manger manager: Meet a woman who can fill a stable with nativity sets

Teresa Dominie can hold Christmas in the palm of her hand. 

The Pasadena, N.L., woman has about 150 nativity scenes — many of them miniatures — which fill the shelves of an entire wall of her living room.

You'll see familiar depictions of Joseph, Mary and the baby Jesus inside a humble stable. They were made in countries around the globe — Italy, Poland, Peru.

"It's just ... Christmas," she said in an interview with CBC Radio's Corner Brook Morning Show.

"And every year when I open the boxes, I recall who gave it to me, where I was when I bought it, what the meaning is behind it ... and it just brings all the memories of past Christmases flooding back."

Goodbye cow, hello moose

One of her newest additions has an all-Canadian flair: Mary and Joseph dressed in the red serge uniforms of the RCMP, baby Jesus lying on a large maple leaf, and the traditional cow and donkey replaced by a beaver and a moose.

The background for the stable is an inukshuk.

Dominie bought it at a Ten Thousand Villages store in Toronto.

Then there are nativity scenes featuring snowmen, Charlie Brown's Peanuts gang, and s'mores-themed nativity scenes — that's right, s'mores, the treat made of a graham cracker, marshmallow and chocolate.

Traditional or quirky, each nativity scene has a place in Dominie's home.

Friends and family discover new finds

The past six years have brought a big boost to the part-time teacher's collection. It's doubled thanks to friends and family who keep a lookout for scenes in their travels. Her family and friends — in real life and on Facebook — have all bought displays for her, or suggested ones to add to her collection.

"Some of them have humorous stories and some have kind of bittersweet stories, because of where they came from," Dominie says, "but they all just remind me of what Christmas is all about and the feelings that come with that."

Some of them have humorous stories and some have kind of bittersweet stories.- Teresa Dominie

​Dominie started collecting the scenes in 1991, after she received one from her parents. Soon, she was gathering displays from all over the world, in every style imaginable.

"My husband [Andrew, also a teacher] and I are very blessed," she said.

"We travel with students [from] the school, and it's just something you see when you travel through different countries, their take on what a nativity looks like and their different traditions," she says.

Each set is a memory

Collecting nativity scenes is "a way of bringing a souvenir home that's maybe not going to clutter up my home all year long, so it brings back the memories of where I've been."

Posting photos of her collection on Facebook has been both a boost and a challenge. 

Last year, after she changed her profile picture to a photo of one of her new nativity scenes, people commented that the picture was not enough: "'We need the story, we need the background. Who gave it to you? Where'd you buy it?'"

Now when she posts a picture, she says, "I have to put thought into it."

The latest trend

Dominie doesn't necessarily follow the trends in new nativity scenes.

"This year, the biggest fashion is the millennial hipster nativity that people have seen online," she said.

"It's got the wise men on Segways with Amazon boxes, Joseph with a man bun, taking a selfie of himself, and Mary in the stable. They're wearing the tight jeans."

• Justin Trudeau's Christmas message
• Pope Francis' Christmas blessing 
• More: Delve into the Corner Brook Morning Show's archive

On the question of good taste, Dominie says she hasn't really seen anything that crosses the line into disrespect.

While she says she wouldn't go out and buy the hipster one herself, "I certainly wouldn't turn it down if it showed up at my door."

Come to think of it, a house that has Mounties, Fisher-Price, Charlie Brown and s'mores nativity scenes could probably make room for the man-bun Joseph and his family.