Nativity Scenes

About 600 nativity scenes will be on view today and Sunday. The creches will be on display from noon to 9 p.m. today and from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at 1600 Erbes Road. The nativity scenes include 60 from Simi Valley collector Leila Jones, whose displays include a nativity scene so small it fits on the head of a pin, a creche made up of marionettes and one from Kyrgyzstan with the Mary figurine wearing a burka. The event is free.

A Claremont church's nativity display that showed gay couples holding hands was vandalized in an incident discovered Christmas Day that authorities are investigating as a hate crime. Claremont United Methodist Church has a Christmas tradition of unusual nativity scene installations that are intended to carry a social or political message. Despite some of the controversial topics, the installations had never been defaced, according to church officials and John Zachary, the artist who created them.

San Diego City officials on Friday hammered out an agreement with a private group to expand an exhibit of life-sized Nativity scenes with other religious and holiday symbols so it can be deemed constitutional and displayed at Balboa Park during the 1988 Christmas holidays. The agreement comes on the heels of a turbulent controversy that began earlier this week when City Atty.

In a sunny park overlooking the beach in Santa Monica, where a cool breeze blows in from the Pacific, the so-called war over Christmas has found its latest battlefield. Over almost six decades, a collection of Santa Monica's Christian churches have re-created the sprawling, life-sized Nativity scenes of Jesus Christ's birth. But this year, there's no room in the park. PHOTOS: Battle over Christmas displays Atheist groups objected to churches' use of the public Palisades Park to espouse a religious message and applied to the city of Santa Monica for their own spaces.

Every Christmas, Emma Suquett has brought out the figures of Mary, Joseph and the Baby Jesus and assembled them with loving care in a manger as the centerpiece of her family's nacimiento (Nativity scene). But this year, instead of having the nacimiento in her East Los Angeles living room, Suquett has installed the creche in the Southwest Museum in Highland Park for an exhibition that captures both the form and spirit of the nacimiento tradition.

More than 300 Nativity scenes depicting the birth of Jesus Christ and reflecting the diversity of cultures worldwide will be displayed this weekend at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at 674 S. Yorba St. in Orange. An extensive musical program will be offered in tandem with the exhibit from 2 to 9 p.m. today, and 5 to 9 p.m. Sunday and Monday. The exhibit is open to the public at no charge.

A coalition of Santa Monica churches is mobilizing to sustain a 34-year-old Christmas tradition in that city. Each Christmas since 1954, a series of Nativity scenes has adorned scenic Ocean Avenue. Until six years ago, the city sponsored the project, but it was forced to withdraw its financial support after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that local governments could not use public funds for religious displays.

Responding to legal threats from local business leaders, Caltrans on Wednesday backed down from a move to reduce the number of nativity scenes displayed on the Euclid Avenue median. The state agency, which has jurisdiction because the street also is a state highway, had said it would allow only four of the customary 12 scenes this year. The rest were to be representative of non-Christian faiths.

Under pressure from city officials and a storm of community protest, San Diego City Atty. John Witt late Thursday backed off from his opinion that a popular series of life-size Nativity scenes would be barred from the Organ Pavilion at Balboa Park starting next year. Witt's reversal came after angry San Diegans made hundreds of telephone calls to city offices and local Jewish leaders, who reported at least one bomb threat and dozens of blatantly anti-Semitic messages.

Don't bother wishing Dick Hogan a Merry Christmas. He considers it a holiday for the greedy, and he's hung a sign reading "Happy Winter Solstice, The REAL reason for the season" near a nativity scene outside the Parker County Courthouse. He got a permit for the sign as part of a settlement of a lawsuit he filed against the county challenging display of the religious scene on public property.

Heather Bleemers had never spent much time on Los Angeles' Eastside, despite being an urban planning graduate student at USC. But on Sunday, Bleemers ventured from her usual stamping grounds. She and about 50 others toured the area's Nativity scenes, known as nacimientos, taking advantage of the new Gold Line extension. Unlike previous tours by car or bike, this year's event depended entirely on public transportation. "We live in Silver Lake and . . . don't go outside that area much," said Bleemers, who took the tour with her husband.

We've heard about "The Men Who Stare at Goats" but what about the men who wrangle goats? The goats that had to bear the brunt of George Clooney's psychic assaults were provided by animal coordinator Sled Reynolds and his company, Gentle Jungle. "I only keep about four or five goats," Reynolds said. "We use them in nativity scenes. But we found a rancher near the set in New Mexico who let us use the 80 goats the film required." Just like their costars, when they weren't filming, they hung out in a trailer -- but with fewer amenities.

It's a labor of love, full of Christmas spirit and, this year, a hint of crosstown rivalry. Ever since Pope John Paul II initiated the tradition in 1982, the Vatican's Nativity scene has attracted thousands of Romans and tourists. But on Monday, as about 20 helmeted workmen in blue and white outfits were finishing up the extravaganza that will be unveiled today in St. Peter's Square, Rome City Hall beat the Vatican to the punch.

A Baby Jesus statue in a Bal Harbour nativity scene is getting a Global Positioning System for Christmas. The statue will be equipped after a bolted-down statue went missing. "We may need to rely on technology to save our savior," said Dina Cellini, display overseer.

Even after Christmas, many L.A. homes are adorned with lights, ribbons, ornaments and the occasional inflatable snowman or Santa -- colorful, brightly lighted decorations that are easy to see from the confines of a speeding car. To see the intricate works of nacimientos, however, you'll need to either slow down or ditch the car entirely.

Religious holiday decorations that were banished a year ago from their longtime home in Mission Viejo to a remote park have returned this year to the bustling corner of Chrisanta Drive and La Paz Road, restoring a 35-year-old tradition that many locals had feared would fade. "The religious symbols have special meaning during the holidays," said city resident Thanh Thayer, 35, who visits the intersection annually with her daughters to see the popular Nativity scene.

Four Colombian men were arrested after Spanish police made an unusual holiday haul--a 12-figure Nativity scene filled with 6.6 pounds of pressed cocaine worth $2 million. Police said Saturday that agents had discovered the drug inside the infant Jesus, the Virgin Mary and other Nativity figures. Agents followed a Colombian man suspected of being a major contact in drug-smuggling operations to Madrid's Barajas Airport on Thursday, police said.

A sharply divided federal appeals court Wednesday upheld San Diego's right to permit a private group to display a life-size Nativity scene in a public park during the Christmas season. In a 2-1 decision, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said the display was legal because it was placed in a section of Balboa Park that is a traditional public forum and because other groups are allowed to use the area while the display is in place.

When fantasies are not just allowed but expected, residents of East Los Angeles rise to the occasion. In a few frontyards this Christmas season--which includes today's Feast of the Epiphany, celebrating the gifts of the three kings to the baby Jesus--Nativity scenes go beyond statues of Mary, Joseph and the Christ child. In these imaginative creations, the holy family looks out from Bethlehem onto tropical jungles and snowy Victorian towns, dinosaur parks and roadside taco stands.

James Govan is a man on a mission: to promote and expand the 800-year-old creche tradition. His collection contains 300-plus sets from 80 countries. Many collectors focus on traditional tabletop scenes, some of which include dozens of figures and shops re-creating Bethlehem at the time Jesus was born. But Govan, 65, prefers folk art creches.