St. Cloud man restoring family’s century-old nativity scene

St. Cloud’s Vince Vallone thought he was permanently preserving an enormous Nativity scene, started by his great grandfather in Italy, when he entrusted it to the now defunct Holy Land Experience in Orlando in 2010.

The diorama, consisting of over 4,000 figurines depicting the birth of Jesus in the town of Bethlehem in Judea, had been passed down through the family, coming over from Italy to Philadelphia, then Miami, and finally Kissimmee. Over the years scenes and pieces were added, most of them either hand-built or vintage Nativity figures from Italy and France.

In the 1990s, the scene was displayed at schools and churches throughout Kissimmee and Osceola County, and during the Christmas season of 1995, it took pride of place in the Osceola Mall, now Plaza del Sol. All during this time, Vallone gratefully accepted donations, and soon the funds received were in excess of the cost of maintaining and transporting the display. Working with guidance counselors at Beaumont, Denn John, and St. Cloud middle schools, Vince, and his wife Debbie donated 37 pairs of new Nike sneakers to children in need in 1993, then 80 in 1994, and many more during the following years.

As the years passed, and family circumstances changed, a dilemma emerged of storing the Nativity scene that was no longer in such great demand for display. Vallone said placing it at Holy Land was an ideal solution, allowing thousands of Christians to view the family’s legacy.

In February 2020, the Holy Land Experience attraction closed after several years, and the property was sold to AdventHealth. All during this time, Vallone was trying to reclaim the Nativity scene. Finally, he was able to get through to the right person in the AdventHealth organization to gain access to the shuttered site, which is intended for a hospital. Unfortunately, that was just the beginning of a long, difficult, and sometimes heartbreaking process to get the display back to St. Cloud.

Since the last time Vallone had seen the Nativity scene, renovations had created several walls around the diorama that prevented any easy way to extract the piece for transportation. At some point, the display had been vandalized, figurines and buildings stomped upon and smashed. Finally, with the help of a father and son contractor team, portions of the walls blocking access for removal were removed, and Rental World of St. Cloud provided a forklift to load and unload the structure.

Once brought to Vallone’s home in St. Cloud, the real work has begun. Vince is painstakingly restoring the damaged buildings and figurines, one at a time. He is adamant about maintaining the quality in all of the repairs, fabricating replacement limbs for damaged figurines from clay and plastic. His extended family, many of whom remember the display from the holidays in South Florida, search online and purchase more of the vintage figures to replace those that cannot be repaired.

More images and information on the Nativity can be found on YouTube at: http://bit.ly/3Kx6805. A GoFundMe page who help restore the display can be found at: https://www.gofundme.com/f/tiny-town-of-bethlehem-nativity