SACRAMENTO, Calif. — On Christmas Day, many of us wake up to presents underneath brightly decorated trees. We open our gifts, share our excitement and thank Santa Claus for putting us on his "nice" list. But for a local man, it's not Santa, trees or gifts that conjure up images of Christmas.
“It's the sight of the 'nacimiento', the nativity scene, as we call it,” Jorge Rey said.
Rey is originally from Colombia and remembers Christmas being the best part of his childhood.
He said it’s mostly because of the traditions in his native land, such as cooking delicious food, spending time with family and creating nativity scenes.
“We would do it every year, I remember very vividly,” he said.
That’s why he decided to continue one of his favorite and most important traditions here in Sacramento.
“I thought, well if it took God six days to create the universe, why not recreate one of my own, here in my home,” he said.
Obviously, it took Rey a little longer to recreate parts of the holy land right in his home.
“I started seven or eight years ago, and I started very small. Every year I started adding more and more. Now, it is this big,” he said.
It takes Rey two weeks to put together all the different scenes of where baby Jesus’ birth took place in Bethlehem.
“Two weeks to put up and two to take down. It’s hard work but I love it,” he added. He does it to bring parts of his Colombian culture back to Sacramento by recreating one of the biggest and most unique and impressive nativity scenes in our area.
He uses thousands of ornaments and sand, which are brought all the way from Italy. He also uses paper brought from Colombia.
“These are all memories from my country... my family. Several family members do this every year,” he explained.
Although the nativity scene is a nice craft to look at, for Rey, it’s much more than that.
“This is big for us, not just to put the show, but to pray and thank God for the whole year,” he said while holding the Bible.
Rey said the nativity scene represents the tradition of “La Novena”—nine successive days of prayer from Dec. 16 to Christmas Eve.
“La Novena,” is a preparation or advent prayer for Christmas recounting the nine- month pregnancy of the Virgin Mary and Joseph.
“It is an old Colombian and Latin American tradition from the 1700s, passed from generation to generation,” Rey said.
“During these nine days, we read the prayers in the book, we ask God for blessing and we start singing the Christmas carols,” he added.
When asked why he goes the extra mile to bring these traditions to the Sacramento area, Rey said he simply wants to spread a universal message that anyone can connect with.
“I think with any culture, it doesn’t have to be Latinos,” he said.
As this year’s nativity scene will soon be taken down, Rey is looking forward to next year, when he hopes to expand it to another room in his home.
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